SisAl Pilot Clustering event – 6th October 2022

21 Oct 2022

Context and scope of the SisAl Pilot Clustering Event

As agreed in the Grant Agreement, under Task 6.3 Clustering and EU stakeholder workshop organization (lead by NTNU), the Clustering activities organized by the EC will be attended by consortium members. Moreover, the consortium will also organize a joint clustering event under the umbrella of EIT Raw materials (D6.6), with an international research focus, inviting among others, our international collaborators.

EIT Raw materials (EIT RM) and European Raw Material Alliance (ERMA) were involved in the organization and execution of the event. Originally, the clustering event was planned to be a physical event linked to an EIT RM event, such as the EIT RM Summit, stakeholder days or a thematic meeting. However, after discussions with EIT RM, it was decided to link the event to a partner visit at NTNU. Personnel from EIT RMs Innovation Hub North (the hub that NTNU belongs to) were at NTNU and presented the upcoming calls, news from the network and welcomed NTNU to ERMA. Face to face meetings between researchers and EIT RM as well as lab visits were also organized when they were at NTNU. Since the clustering event was organized in Norway, we took the advantage of the local community and invited speakers from the Scandinavian ecosystem with the aim of boosting the innovation and education in the rest of Europe by presenting the Scandinavian perspective.

Around 50 participants enrolled in the online event and 30 people joined the session virtually organized.

The programme

The event aimed at providing an overview of the actual raw materials situation in Europe, starting from the Norwegian perspective, as well as the training, education, and academia perspectives. The half-day online event wanted to gather representatives across the value chain of raw materials: Raw material suppliers, processing companies, end-users, and recyclers, along with academia, research institutes, key players of the industrial sector with best practices, and representatives from EU-funded projects with innovative ideas.

To facilitate this, a speaker from each one of the above-mentioned categories of stakeholders were invited to the event to introduce their perspectives on the topic faced.

Namely, the speakers invited to the event were the following:

  1. Olli Salmi (managing director at Innovation Hub North and Baltic Sea at EIT RM) – Representative from EIT RM / ERMA
  2. Prof. Gabriella Tranell (NTNU), Coordinator of SisAl Pilot and SisAl slag projects, presented an overview of the SisAl approaches.
  3. Dr. Benjamin Ravary (R&D Director – Business Unit Manganese Alloys at Eramet in Norway) introduced the industrial approach.
  4. Dr Maria Wallin (NTNU), Administrative coordinator of HydroMetEC, discussed hydrometallurgy from an education/training sector perspective.
  5. Dr Tomas Liljenfors, founder of BRYNE a start-up based in Sweden, presented its new approach

The panel discussion at the end of the event was moderated by Mr. Anastasios Kladis. Mr. Kladis is a Mining Engineer – Metallurgist from NTUA, Greece. He holds an MSc in Mineral Economics from Nottingham University, UK, and is professionally trained in INSEAD, France, and IMD, Switzerland. Mr. Kladis is strongly involved in sourcing analysis and/or business planning in several EU projects (Ensureal, RemovAl, AlSiCal, Crocodile, Reactiv, and SisAl Pilot). He is also consulting several companies in the industry of raw materials production on strategic business planning, strategic sourcing, product development, and M&As.

This panel discussion tried to shed light on the following topics:

  • How is the recycling of secondary raw materials approached in Norway?
  • How can we improve the recycling rate in Europe?
  • What are the main innovation avenues in Reduce – Reuse – Recycle triangle, which the Raw Materials Community is working on right now?

These three key questions were also asked in the registration forms to the participants, to provide inputs to the discussion and also from the audience attending the event. The questions, of course, were not mandatory.

Below is also reported the matrix used by the moderator during the panel discussion to stimulate the debate.

 

The presentations shared during the event can be found here: