Monthly Archives: January 2022

Rare earths and the location.

Santiago Cuesta López, general director of the national cluster for sustainable mining in Spain, is the Spanish representative on the European Commission’s expert committee charged with finding a solution to the rare earth crisis. In a 20-minute interview, he said that it is necessary to exploit “in a sustainable way” the rare earths and critical materials that exist in Europe to avoid relying on other continents.

“Rare earths are elements that were named precisely because they are not very abundant in the earth’s crust,” explains the expert, who points out their peculiarity by having “very special properties to different types of materials”. And he gives the example of neodymium, withoutwhich “we could not make permanent, high-powered magnets”, and without them “high magnetic fields” like those present in nuclear magnetic resonances could not be generated. ” Nor could we have the engines of the windmills to generate renewable energies, or the motors for electric scooters”

The problem is that European countries do not take advantage of the raw materials and rare earths they have in their territories. Without going any further, Spain has underground 10% of the world’s reserves of tungsten in Salamanca and Castile, and the same percentage of those of tungsten, which “is exported to other countries to be returned to us transformed later”. ” We need a completely new vision of raw materials, including mining, but always sustainable, with new technologies and circularity”

Click here to check out the news.


Rare earths and critical raw materials

Scandium, lanthanum, praseodymium, neodymium, are some of the so-called rare earth elements, fundamental for new technologies along with other raw materials that have been declared critical, for their industrial importance: lithium, tungsten, magnesium, cobalt…

These raw materials have never been abundant and as a result of the crisis unleashed by the pandemic, being able to obtain them has become even more complicated.

A determining factor for regions such as Europe, which is highly dependent: although many of them are present in its soils, it has to import them at a rate of 90%.

The new solution proposed by Santiago Cuesta, Director General of the ICAMCYL Foundation, is for Europe to exploit (“sustainably”) the rare earths and critical materials within its borders to reduce dependence on the outside world.

Click here to check out the news.


Open the second call for the European project MINE.THE.GAP aimed at SMEs for the green and digital transformation of mining and raw materials

The European project MINE.THE.GAP, in which the ISMC cluster participates together with an international consortium made up of 11 partners from Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Finland, Bulgaria and Poland, has already opened the second call for SMEs in mining and raw materials, information and communication technologies, advanced manufacturing, resource efficiency and circular economy sectors, can apply for aid in terms of innovation vouchers. With an available budget of up to €1.5 million to develop them collaboratively, and with an amount that can be financed in projects of up to €50,000 per SME, this call will be open until March 14, 2022.

To be eligible, the SMEs participating in MINE.THE.GAP will have to form consortiums with two or three European partners among the eligible countries with the aim of facing the challenges of the 21st century mining and raw materials, which include the extraction sustainability, the circular economy, the digitization, the supply chain and logistics or the environmental footprint, among others.

There are two types of innovation vouchers available to applicants:

  • The MINE-PoC vouchers will finance up to €25,000 per SME for the design of a prototype/proof of concept to demonstrate its viability (TRL 6-7).
  • The MINE-Demo vouchers will finance up to €50,000 per SME for the development and testing of simple pilots in a production environment with all the characteristics of the product/service/solution (TRL 7-8).

This European Union project also offers a virtual platform to introduce yourself and look for future partners: https://h2020-minethegap.eu/login/

To know all the information, see applicable conditions, and submit proposals, consult the MINE.THE.GAP website

Briefing in Spanish

Next January 20 from 12:00 to 1:15 p.m., the Spanish partners of the project will organize a National Infoday of the second open call of MINE.THE.GAP, in which the financing scheme will be presented, the requirements so that the SMEs participate and will frame the project in their political context.

It is necessary to register in advance through this link.

About MINE.THE.GAP project

The MINE.THE.GAP project is an EU-funded INNOSUP H2020 Innovation Action (GA 873149) that will develop and provide a support platform for the reinforcement of existing value chains and the development of new industrial value chains in the commodity and mining sectors through sectoral and cross-regional innovation and support services in cluster-related SMEs through synergies and interactions with providers and enablers in the existing and emerging fields of ICT, circular economy, resource efficiency and advanced manufacturing.


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