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…

The second day of our global meeting had everything we wished for innovation, communication, research, a workshop by the amazing Gate2Growth team (Marius-Febi Matei and Nikolaj Lervad Sørensen), and a visit to one of our pilot sites: Canteras Industriales (with Jens Bruno, head of the firm; Noemí Ariza and Francisco Ortega). This site extracts and processes celestite ore or natural strontium sulfate.

Kanishk Bhadani, part of the Chalmers University of Technology team in Rotate with Gauti Asbjornsson, and Lorena Viladés, from ANEFA, that leads this project, also took the floor to take us through the latest news and the different strategies on their respective work packages.

We also had an important institutional visit: Jesús Portillo, the Mining Sector General Director of the regional government in which our meeting took place: Andalucía.

What an intense and productive couple of days!