2018 – Page 4 – La Palma Research Centre

The MIN-GUIDE annual conference 2017 was held in Brussels, 13th and 14th of December 2017. The conference was entitled “An Innovation-Friendly Policy Framework along the Mineral Production Value Chain” and intended to provide insights into the “cornerstones and future trends of an innovation-friendly policy framework for exploration and extraction, processing, waste management, and mine closure”.

As part of the MIN-GUIDE conference’s poster section, the FORAM project was presented by LPRC member Luís Lopes. The FORAM project is creating a World Forum on Raw Materials in order to further establish the international cooperation on raw materials throughout its entire value chain. Through the poster, the FORAM project attracted a lot of attention, mainly from institutions who want to be involved as stakeholders in the development of the forum (envisaged to be ready by the end of 2018). The FORAM project aims to connect institutions and persons in its network, understand their needs, and adapt cooperation measures to solve them.

Maps were disabled by the visitor on this site. Click to open the map in a new window.

Both the UNEXMIN and ¡VAMOS! projects were presented at the first event on Horizon 2020 mining projects, entitled “H2020 cluster event for ongoing mining projects”, organized by EASME in Brussels, Belgium, on the 12th of December 2017. The event served as a catalyser to gather Horizon 2020 and FP7 projects that are performing research and innovation in the various areas of the mining sector. These include underwater exploration (the case for UNEXMIN) and underwater exploitation (the case for ¡VAMOS!), amongst many others.

The one-day event was characterised by presentations from each of the invited projects regarding objectives, approaches, and challenges – the main goal was to find synergies between the different mining projects, specially through networking. There were 6 main fields where the different projects were allocated: Intelligent Mining, Deep Sea Exploration and Mining, Sustainable Selective Low-Impact Mining, Re-opening abandoned mines in the EU, Real Time Exploration and Real Time Mining, Alternative Mining and, finally, Climate Services for Mining.

The one-day event was characterised by presentations from each of the invited projects regarding objectives, approaches, and challenges. The main goal was to find synergies between the different mining projects, specially through networking. There were 6 main fields where the different projects were allocated: Intelligent Mining, Deep Sea Exploration and Mining, Sustainable Selective Low-Impact Mining, Re-opening abandoned mines in the EU, Real Time Exploration and Real Time Mining, Alternative Mining and, finally, Climate Services for Mining.

The UNEXMIN and ¡VAMOS! projects were both part of the “Re-opening abandoned mines in the EU” session. Both projects are creating innovative solutions to explore and exploit underwater environments such as flooded underground mines and open-pit mines. With the use of the technologies, that are being developed by our projects, the re-opening of closed, abandoned mines is becoming a reality.