The Mining and Minerals Hall (MMH) is the world meeting that gathers the present and future knowledge of mining. Seville Conference and Exhibition Centre (FIBES) hosted this meeting for professionals of the mining industry from all over the world between October 15 and 17. It was an excellent opportunity to share experiences and the latest trends in raw materials and mining. ICAMCyL team attended this event with a two-fold goal: represent the Iberian Sustainable Mining Cluster (ISMC) and showcase the ISMC’s members activities in the development of new technologies for sustainable mining.

Our colleagues Marta Alonso, mining engineer and researcher at ICAMCyL, Elena Fernández, project manager at ISMC and Santiago Cuesta, general director of both ICAMCyL and ISMC travelled last month to Seville. They could exchange experiences and knowledge with many attendees who approached our booth and also attended some of the many parallel sessions organised around the latest advances in mining, innovation, sustainability and latest news in the sector.

The day before the start of MMH, the OECD held the ‘Workshop of the OECD Regions and Mining Cities’, an event that also involved the Regional Government of Andalusia and MIREU project partners. The objective of this event was to provide an adequate platform for national and regional governments, industry, universities and other organizations to develop better regional policies addressed to the extractive industry. In this workshop, ISMC’s director, Santiago Cuesta, was part of a panel dedicated to exchange international experiences of local and regional pilot projects and programmes. He talked about the relevance of the Smart Specialization Strategies (RIS3), as well as the main strategies and objectives of MIREU, the H2020 project for building cooperation between the mining and metallurgy regions of the EU.

During the MMH events, we actively participated in the roundtable ‘Circular Economy Opportunities for the mining industry’ held on Wednesday, October 16 as part of the technical conferences within MMH. This session, moderated by Vicente Gutiérrez, CEO at CONFEDEM, highlighted the essential role of the extractive industry as a supplier of key raw materials for resource efficiency, energy transition and sustainable development. In this regard, the integration of the circular economy in extractive activities was pointed out as crucial for mining waste management, reduction of hazardous waste; development of new processing technologies; and optimisation of water consumption thanks to increased recycling rates.