Innovation, circularity, and sustainability. These three concepts sum up the new challenge led by the National Association of Aggregates Manufacturers -ANEFA and funded by the European Commission, to contribute, from aggregates mining to more efficient, conscious, and resilient development. The project (part of the Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme with the number: 101177746) has been approved with an outstanding mark of 14 out of 15 by the European Commission. This acronym stands for Sustainable & Circular Production of Mineral Critical Raw Materials. It exemplifies a further step forward by the sector, and by ANEFA, in the command of top-level R&D&I projects.

The objective of SCIMIN-CRM is to increase the possibility of using mining materials discarded years ago and rehabilitating areas where mining activity took place in the past before the implementation of current technology and measures. Thus, SCIMIN-CRM will focus on the characterization, valorization, recovery, processing, and utilization of mining stockpiles that were not evaluated at the time to convert them into recoverable resources. Thanks to this project, the share of usable material would increase from around 0% to 5%, reducing analysis and evaluation time by 80%. The focus of the project seeks to maximize the transferability of its results so that it can be applied in almost any environment by any stakeholder

All this makes SCIMIN-CRM a great economic and environmental project as it will develop tools and processes that will contribute to addressing some of the most important challenges facing Europe. These include the dependence on raw materials, the recovery of degraded areas, the maximum use of resources, and the protection of the environment while increasing the competitiveness and sustainability of processes.