Primary and secondary raw materials are fundamental to Europe’s economy and growth. They represent the most important link in the value chain of industrial goods production, which plays a prominent role as a source of prosperity in Europe. However, as stated in the call, there exists to-date no raw materials knowledge infrastructure at EU level. The Mineral Intelligence Capacity Analysis (MICA) project contributes to on-going efforts towards the establishment of such an infrastructure by projects such as ProMine, EURare, Minventory, EuroGeoSource, Minerals4EU, ProSum, I2Mine, INTRAW, MINATURA2020 and others. The main objectives of MICA are: - Identification and definition of stakeholder groups and their raw material intelligence (RMI) requirements, - Consolidation of relevant data on primary and secondary raw materials, - Determination of appropriate methods and tools to satisfy stakeholder RMI requirements, - Investigation of (RMI-) options for European mineral policy development, - Development of the EU-Raw Materials Intelligence Capacity Platform (EU-RMICP) integrating information on data and methods/tools with user interface capable of answering stakeholder questions, - Linking the derived intelligence to the European Union Raw Materials Knowledge Base developed by the Minerals4EU project. The MICA project brings together a multidisciplinary team of experts from natural and technical sciences, social sciences including political sciences, and information science and technology to ensure that raw material intelligence is collected, collated, stored and made accessible in the most useful way corresponding to stakeholder needs. Furthermore, the MICA project integrates a group of 15 European geological surveys that contribute to the work program as third parties. They have specific roles in the fulfilment of tasks and will provide feedback to the project from the diverse range of backgrounds that characterizes the European geoscience community.

Since the publication of the first list of Critical Raw Materials (CRM) in 2010 by the Ad-hoc Working Group on CRM, numerous European projects have addressed (part of) the CRMs value and several initiatives have contributed to gather (part of) the related community into clusters and associations. This led to the production of important knowledge, unfortunately disseminated. Numerous databases have also been developed, sometimes as duplicates. For the first time in the history, SCRREEN aims at gathering European initiatives, associations, clusters, and projects working on CRMs into along lasting Expert Network on Critical Raw Materials, including the stakeholders, public authorities and civil society representatives. SCRREEN will contribute to improve the CRM strategy in Europe by (i) mapping primary and secondary resources as well as substitutes of CRMs, (ii) estimating the expected demand of various CRMs in the future and identifying major trends, (iii) providing policy and technology recommendations for actions improving the production and the potential substitution of CRM, (iv) addressing specifically WEEE and other EOL products issues related to their mapping and treatment standardization and (vi) identifying the knowledge gained over the last years and easing the access to these data beyond the project. The project consortium also acknowledges the challenges posed by the disruptions required to devlop new CRM strategies, which is why stakeholder dialogue is at the core of SCRREEN: policy, society, R&D and industrial decision-makers are involved to facilitate strategic knowledge-based decisions making to be carried out by these groups. A specific attention will also be brought on informing the general public on our strong dependence on imported raw materials, on the need to replace rare materials with substitutes and on the need to set up innovative and clean actions for exploration, extraction, processing and recycling.

The main economic, technological and environmental challenges of small mining include reducing high investment costs, reducing generation of waste and large tailings, identifying and addressing environmental impacts, and improving flexibility, automation and safety of operations. However, at the moment, there is no quick-fix available to reduce the environmental impact from mines, and it is neither realistic to expect production solutions very distant from today’s technologies. Considering that the present mining technology is based on rock blasting and mobile mining equipment for loading and transportation, the major challenge is to generate a new sustainable systemic solution that affects positively the relevant mining value chain. SLIM aims to develop a cost-effective and sustainable selective low impact mining solution based on non-linear rock mass fragmentation by blasting models, airborne particulate matter, vibration affections and nitrate leaching mitigation actions for exploitation of small mineral deposits (including those with chemically complex ore-forming phases) through a new generation of explosives and an advanced automatic blast design software based on improved rock mass characterisation and fragmentation models for optimum fragmentation and minimum rock damage and far-field vibrations. SLIM consortium is led by UPM (es), with LTU (se), MUL (at) and TUG (at) as Research Insitutions, 3GSM (at - Rock fragmentation and blasting software), MAXAM (es - Explosives), ORGIVA (es - Fluorite mine) and ERZBERG (at - Iron mine) and ARNO (es - Quarry) as validators in relevant environment. BRGM (fr), INVESTORNET (dk), MINPOL (at), and ZABALA (es) complement the Environmental and Economic assessments, the Communication and Dissemination activities and Social Awareness actions. SLIM addresses the following issue: a) Sustainable selective low impact mining (2016), it has a planned duration of 48 months and a budget of €6,979,200 requesting €6,979,200 of EU funding.

The INTMET approach represents a unique technological breakthrough to overcome the limitations related to difficult low grade and complex ores to achieve high efficient recovery of valuable metals (Cu, Zn, Pb, Ag) and CRM (Co, In, Sb). Main objective of INTMET is applying on-site mine-to-metal hydroprocessing of the produced concentrates enhancing substantially raw materials efficiency thanks to increase Cu+Zn+Pb recovery over 60% vs. existing selective flotation. 3 innovative hydrometallurgical processes (atmospheric, pressure and bioleaching), and novel more effective metals extraction techniques (e.g. Cu/Zn-SX-EW, chloride media, MSA, etc) will be developed and tested at relevant environment aiming to maximise metal recovery yield and minimising energy consumption and environmental footprint. Additionally secondary materials like tailings and metallurgical wastes will be tested as well for metals recovery and sulphur valorisation. The technical, environmental and economic feasibility of the entire approaches will be evaluated to ensure a real business solution of the integrated INTMET process. INTMET will be economically viable thanks to diversification of products (Cu, Zn, Pb), high-profitable solution (producing commodities not concentrates), with lower operation and environmental costs (on-site hydroprocessing will avoid transport to smelters) and allowing mine-life extension developing a new business-model concept based on high efficient recovery of complex ores that will ensure EU mining industry competitiveness and employment. INTMET is fully aligned with EIP-RM validated in the PolymetOre Commitment where most of INTMET partners take part on and the market up-take solutions are guaranteed by an exploitation from industrially-driven consortia composed by 3 Mines, 2 SMEs (AGQ -waste&water tech provider; MINPOL -policy & exploitation expert), 2 tech providers (OUTOTEC and TR) and 5 complementary RTD´s with expertise in leaching and recovery metals processing

The project Towards a World Forum on Raw Materials (FORAM) will develop and set up an EU-based platform of international experts and stakeholders that will advance the idea of a World Forum on Raw Materials (WFRM) and enhance the international cooperation on raw material policies and investments. The global use of mineral resources has drastically increased and supply chains have become ever more complex. A number of global initiatives and organizations have been contributing to knowledge and information transfer, including the EC, UNEP International Resource Panel, the World Resources Forum, the World Material Forum, the OECD and others. It is widely felt that improved international resource transparency and governance would be beneficial for all, since it would lead to stability, predictability, resource-efficiency and hence a better foundation for competitiveness on a sustainable basis. The FORAM project will contribute to consolidate the efforts towards a more joint and coherent approach towards raw materials policies and investments worldwide, by closely working with the relevant stakeholders in industry, European and international organisations, governments, academia and civil society. Synergies with relevant EU Member States initiatives will be explored and fostered. The project will in particular seek to engage the participation of G20 Member countries and other countries active in the mining and other raw materials sectors, so that experiences will be shared and understanding of all aspects of trade in raw materials will be increased. By implementing this project an EU-based platform of international key experts and stakeholders is created, related to the entire raw materials value chain. This platform will work together on making the current complex maze of existing raw material related initiatives more effective. As such, the FORAM project will be the largest collaborative effort for raw materials strategy cooperation on a global level so far.