Details

ERA-MIN Stakeholders Conference in Budapest

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The meeting was opened by Hungarian representatives and three distinguished keynote speakers offered their vision on:

-        The Research, Development and Education Needs to meet the future Supply from
Primary Resources in Europe

-        The rare earth recycling process, substitution and on primary resources and the related needs in Research and education

-        Substitution from the steel industry perspective

The Director for Resources Based, Manufacturing and Consumer Goods Industries at the European Commission, Gwenole Cozigou, updated the participants on the latest developments regarding the European Innovation Partnership on Raw Materials and the related call for commitments.

The main goal of this conference was to announce the second ERA-MIN joint call. First, the results of the pilot joint call (2013) were presented and the four selected projects which were introduced by their respective coordinators. Then the 2014 joint call was announced and discussed with the participating funding agencies (more information on the second joint call is available here).

Moreover, as ERA-MIN is keen to foster international cooperation on non-energetic raw materials, a dedicated session was organized on this subject, where we had the pleasure to welcome representatives of funding agencies from Argentina, Brazil and South Africa to present their research priorities and national funding programes and a multilateral program CYTED. Indeed, the funding bodies from Argentina and South Africa announced their participation in the second ERA-MIN joint call.

Finally, the participants enjoyed on the 3rd day a field trip to a lignite opencast mine and power plant (Matra Co.) kindly organized by the local host, the Hungarian Office for Mining and Geology.

The presentations from the meeting are available here.