ICAMCyL

The Institute for Business Competitiveness of Castilla y León (ICE) organised in coordination with GKZ Freiberg and in collaboration with the Santa Bárbara Foundation the Castilla y León – EU Cluster Matchmaking Event within the framework of the REMIX project and as part of the European Commission´s EU Cluster Week initiative. The focus of the event was on how to strategically partner clusters and specialised eco-systems across Europe and show the best practices in such collaborations for stimulating new partnerships.

The event was proudly part of the first series of the EU Cluster Weeks 2018-2019, which help to promote national, regional and local cluster events, and to support SMEs’ growth, industrial transformation and regional economic development. The collaboration with the European Commission is a successful example of the EU´s efforts to build strong interregional collaboration to help strengthen business environments for business owners across Europe.

The Castilla y León – EU Cluster Matchmaking Event took place in April and was a great success with a good turnout of people. The importance and value of analysing the eco-systems and networking potential of EU industrial clusters, in order to foster their industrial members’ competitiveness in exploiting their innovation and demonstrating their growth potential in key presentations according to a systemised structure was one of the objectives of the event. Many key players such as the European Commission, the OECD, the EIT RM HUB CENTRUM KOŠICE, the Polish Stonemason's Cluster, and several other entities presented their way of practicing sustainable interregional cooperation in the field of raw materials. The event was an opportunity for attendees to meet peers from the same cluster topic and to broaden their knowledge, skills and business connections on an international, national, regional and local level.

The Castilla y León – EU Cluster Matchmaking Event was an opportunity to team up EU countries and their regions, to encourage European partnerships, to raise awareness of the role of clusters and their achieved results, and to collect feedback on common challenges and the ways they can be addressed in future initiatives. These EU, national and regional partnerships demonstrate the importance and success of such collaborative endeavours in supporting SMEs in their expansion and growth efforts.

The event ended with a visit to the facilities of the Santa Bárbara Foundation. The participants had the opportunity to visit the Foundation's unique facilities, such as the experimental tunnels, the open pit mine, the underground mine or the geothermal plant, among others. In addition, they learned about the entity's activities in terms of professional and specialised training and research and development.

If you are interested in the presentations from the Castilla y León – EU Cluster Matchmaking Event sessions, they can be viewed here.

This article was written by Melania V. Istrate, The Institute for Business Competitiveness of Castilla y León.

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Networking Regions

ICAMCyL

Junta de Castilla y León

Tue, 21/05/2019 - 09:00

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Reflections from the MIREU high-level workshop

Ryan Titley — Thu, 19 Dec 2019 16:05:38 +0000

Reflections from the MIREU high-level workshop Ryan Titley Thu, 19/12/2019 - 17:05

The MIREU project recently organised a high-level workshop on ‘Governance and Policy within Mining and Metallurgy EU Regions’, which was hosted by our project partner ICAMCyL in León, Spain. The workshop gathered regional authorities from several European regions and experts in the field of raw materials and mining, to discuss the future of mining and metallurgy in Europe.

The workshop kicked off with a welcome by the Mayor of León, Antonio Silva, followed by interventions from the Governor of Lapland, Mika Riipi, as well as the President of the Council of León and the Director General for Energy and Mining of the Regional Government of Castilla y León. Both Silva and Riipi highlighted in their speeches the importance of the extractive industry in the regions and the collaboration between European mining regions.

The following session started with an intervention from the European Commission, where Nikos Pantalos from DG GROW presented the S3 Platform on Industrial Modernisation. Pantalos emphasised the importance of regional collaboration in order to modernise the industry, learn from each other and foster investment. With these objectives in mind, several MIREU regions are currently involved in an application for an S3 partnership on mining industry and global value chains, under the Smart Specialisation Platform for Industrial Modernisation. Karen Hanghøj, Director of EIT Raw Materials, continued with a presentation on the business perspective of the raw materials industry in Europe, while Lisanne Raderschall from the OECD had a more international approach when presenting the OECD global network of mining regions and cities and the cooperation with MIREU. This cooperation is further elaborated on in an interview with Raderschall which can be found in another article in this newsletter.

The roundtable session consisted of three roundtable discussions that took place between representatives of the participating regions on topics of European raw materials policies; key regional innovation drivers for sustainable mining; and main barriers for the mining sector. Two key factors for ensuring the sustainable development of the European mining and metallurgy industries emerged from the discussions, namely communication and collaboration. All regional representatives found that clear information and communication with society is imperative for the mining industry. This includes both information on raw materials and their importance as well as communication of good examples, such as mines with high social and environmental standards. Another key factor is collaboration between mining regions, which enables them to learn from each other’s experiences and to share knowledge.

An important part of the high-level workshop was the interactive session where all workshop participants together brainstormed on barriers and problems in the European raw materials industry, and possible solutions to overcome them. The workshop was concluded by a number of short presentations by EU initiatives and projects on raw materials, mining and metallurgy.

This high-level workshop did not only enable European mining and metallurgy regions to engage in an open discussion on the problems and barriers that the mining industry is facing in today’s Europe, but it also contributed to strengthening the collaboration between the regions. The many experiences that were shared, the important knowledge that was exchanged, and the new partnerships that were built constitute evidence for this. Furthermore, the discussions and conclusions of the workshop will constitute the basis for a policy document that later this year will be submitted to the EU institutions to convey a unified message by the regions on the future of the raw materials industry in Europe.

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ICAMCyL

Tue, 12/02/2019 - 11:00

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Governance and Policy within Mining and Metallurgy EU Regions

Ryan Titley — Thu, 02 Jan 2020 14:04:06 +0000

Governance and Policy within Mining and Metallurgy EU Regions Ryan Titley Thu, 02/01/2020 - 15:04

This will be the first in a series of high-level policy workshops, focusing on the future of mining and metallurgy sectors in European regions. This one-day event will provide a platform for the exchange of best practices between high-level representatives of EU regions, with the aim of exploring ways for a common mining approach to raw materials in Europe and fostering discussions on sustainable mining strategies. Furthermore, it will explore links with existing EU initiatives on raw materials, mining and metallurgy at regional level.

Objectives:

Discuss a European roadmap by exchanging best practices on how to foster sustainable mining through Smart Specialisation Strategies (RIS3);
Set up a European-wide mirror of regions considering mining and metallurgy within their Smart Specialisation Strategy (RIS3);
Create a large-scale demonstrator between EU regions boosting mining and metallurgy, covering everything from primary to end-user applications, to ensure the main industrial value chanis' core of the economic engine;
Cluster and interlink present EU initiatives on raw materials, mining and metallurgy at regional level.

The agenda can be found in the attachment.

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Identifying and Promoting Regional Synergies for Economic Growth

ICAMCyL

Event Date

Tue, 15/01/2019 - 09:00 - Tue, 15/01/2019 - 18:00

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Document

Governance and Policy within Mining and Metallurgy EU Regions_2020-01-02_2227.pdf

Future of EU mining regions collaboration

Hilary Webb — Fri, 26 Feb 2021 14:49:45 +0000

Future of EU mining regions collaboration Hilary Webb Fri, 26/02/2021 - 15:49

The Industrial modernisation S3P Mining industry and the CoMMER (ERRIN Task Force on Raw Materials) invite you to an online roundtable discussion on the future of the EU mining regions collaboration. It will be an opportunity to learn more about the initiatives supporting the networking of mining regions.

The online roundtable will take place on 4th March 2021 from 13:00 - 15:00 CET.

During the session, the S3P Mining Industry and the task force will be introduced as two sides of the same coin having a common objective to develop responsible EU mining. In addition, we will have an introduction to the H2020 project SCRREEN2 - Solutions for Critical Raw materials - a European Expert Network 2.

The meeting will the share aims and current status of these collaborations and to invite you to a brainstorming session exploring the good practices supporting and strengthening the EU mining regions collaboration. A more detailed agenda and instructions will be shared with registered participants from 1st March 2021 onwards.

Please register here before 18:00 CET on 3rd March, the link to join the meeting on Microsoft Teams will be sent on the morning of 4th March.

Agenda

The roundtable will be moderated by Ryan Titley, Director of Projects, ERRIN

13.00 - 13.05	*Opening and introduction*, Ryan Titley, Director of Projects, ERRIN
13.05 - 13.25	*Industrial modernisation S3P Mining industry – Supporting the development of the EU Regional Innovation Hubs of Responsible Mining & Metallurgy Business Solutions*, Ilkka Nykänen, partnership coordinator, Business Joensuu, North-Karelia, Finland and supported by the partners
13.25 - 13.45	*CoMMER, ERRIN Task Force on Raw Materials – supporting the regions in project making, policy shaping, partnering, and profiling,* introduction and background Juha Kaija, Geological Survey of Finland – GTK, MIREU project manager, and commented by the Brussels regional offices’ representatives
13.45 – 14.00	*CoMMER and SCRREEN2 - Synergies for improving the raw materials awareness across the EU regions,* W. Eberhard Falck, Vice-President, International Raw Materials Observatory
14.00 – 14.45	*Open roundtable* – moderated by the Ryan Titley, Director of Projects, ERRIN What are your expectations from the European regional collaboration? How the regions can operationalise their role in the implementation of the responsible mining and metallurgy industries? How to maximise the EU investments to develop sustainable regional and interregional mining ecosystems? How can regional cooperation promote a competitive mining & metallurgy sector and sustainable solutions? How the existing platforms Mining industry S3P and CoMMER can support each other?
14.45 – 15.00	*Conclusions and next steps,* Mika Riipi, County Governor, Lapland, Finland