Forecasting and Assessing Europe’s Strategic Raw Materials needs

Inevitably, Europe shows a growing and accelerating consumption of mineral commodities, which, at the moment, the question of whether supply to meet demand is adequate or not cannot be answered with any certainty because secure supply is a matter of knowing the resources and the ability to exploit them concerning sustainability. Non-energy minerals underpin our modern economy and are essential for manufacturing and renewable “green” energy supply technologies. Recycling mining-related waste materials may collect critical and strategic minerals and metals. However, even with the vital contribution from recycling, it will still be necessary to extract them from primary mineral deposits, focusing on applying new technologies for deep exploration and mining, turning low-grade ores into exploitable resources and reducing the generation of mining wastes and extensive tailings by converting them to exploitable resources.

GIS viewer for FRAME results

Through this viewer, the results of the FRAME project are accessible.

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The FRAME project (Forecasting and Assessing Europe’s Strategic Raw Materials Needs) was designed to research the critical and strategic raw materials in Europe, in scenarios described above, by employing sound strategies and a partner base spread far and wide amongst those with some of these raw materials. Through successful teamwork, there was the expertise and knowledge base to provide a significant innovative contribution towards knowing more about the potential primary deposits, predicting new target areas/deposits and recognising the potential in secondary deposits. FRAME comprised eight work Packages (WP) designed to collect, extract and disseminate strategic and critical mineral data to fill existing knowledge gaps in this field.