It is not very common to have the chance to get our whole consortium in one room. More than 50 persons form 21 partners: universities, pilot sites, mining, and technology firms… from Finland to Portugal. A truly great opportunity to get together and focus on the most important issues surrounding this project financed by the European Commission.
During the meeting, every work package leader updated the information on every project area and shared what each of them would be doing in the next months. Important topics such as energy efficiency, innovative mechanical solutions, low environmental footprint, main environmental challenges, biodiversity, pollution reduction, advanced characterization, valorization…
Germán Zango, from Zabala Innovation, was the first one to take the floor and was followed by Bárbara Estevaranz from AMP and Eduardo de Miguel, from UPM-E. Yuri Villagran, from Vito, briefed us about screening, lightweight aggregates, mine tailings, legislation, and melting behavior among other topics.
Leire Martiarena, also from Zabala Innovation, and leader of the team in charge of increasing the social understanding about the sector, interacting with local communities and policymakers, focused on creating local value, clustering activities, and social awareness. She stated that their goal is to co-create and validate a process to obtain social awareness and understanding in the extractive sector in the UE. Noemi Ariza, from Canteras Industriales, heads a team in charge of pilot validation and spoke about how to implement the technologies developed at each of the pilot sites. In the evening there was time for the different teams to meet in small groups and analyze every issue and the next steps to take to accomplish every goal.
