Please introduce yourself first and tell us about your background, areas of expertise, and your position in your institution.
Thank you for the opportunity to introduce myself. First, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to participate in this project with so many people committed to improving environmental solutions in the sector of mining and quarrying and the sustainable supply of critical raw materials.
I am a Civil Engineer who graduated from the Universidad Metropolitana in Venezuela. I have more than 25 years of experience in the production, quality control, and distribution of ready-mix concrete, cement plants, aggregates plants, and asphalt plants.
I began my journey in the world of construction materials working in the ready-mixed concrete division at Cemex Venezuela in 1997. In 2002 I moved to the Canary Islands, where I continued working at Cementos Insulares, Canary Concrete, and Áridos Maxorata, companies that are part of the Satocan group. In 2011 I moved to Stavanger where I started, and currently work, at Velde as product manager. Velde Industri is a group of companies dedicated to the production of crushed aggregates, recycling, ready mix concrete and asphalt production, industrial concrete flooring contractor, and asphalt paving contractor.
What is your role in Rotate as an organization and as an individual?
Velde is one of the five pilot plants of the Rotate project in which some of the technologies developed in the project will be tested on a real scale.
I am the representative of Velde in Rotate, and my role is to coordinate, together with the rest of the project participants, the pilot tests of the technologies selected to be tested in Velde.
The technologies researched and developed by VITO and CTM will be tested in Velde.
VITO leads the research on the Valorisation of Aggregate Washing Residue in Cement and Concrete and CTM leads the technology based on an automated vision system to detect granulometry in real time to improve efficiency in the production process.
Why do you think that projects like Rotate are so important?
I believe that among other sectors, mining, and production of raw materials is one of the least developed. Please don’t get me wrong, a lot of progress has indeed been made, but there is enormous potential for improvement and no less valuable people, prepared and eager to drive the evolution of this sector.
Projects like Rotate are the perfect platform to bring together all the actors and professionals in the sector who see the immense capabilities and challenges of the sector to improve circularity, efficiency, new technologies, and not least reduction of carbon footprint.
In your opinion which should be the most important areas for the future of mining?
We are in a moment in which technology is present to a greater or lesser extent in everything we do. I believe that the future of mining and extraction of critical raw materials will be led by those actors who are committed to implementing technological advances in all their processes, without forgetting that all this must be closely linked to environmental sustainability policies and zero carbon footprint goals.
Let us know you a little bit better. Would you tell us something you like to do when you are out of the office?
I am passionate about spending time with my family. I like to enjoy nature in my free time and go hiking along natural routes, especially mountain routes.
