On February 8, 2018, Umicore reported a net profit of 267 million euro in 2017. Concurrently, Umicore announced an investment of 660 million euro to ramp up the production of battery (cathode) materials for a.o. electric vehicles.

The organising committee of the ELFM IV Symposium (Feb’ 5-6, 2018) is happy to share the ELFM IV Symposium Book (ed. Jones & Machiels, Feb’ 2018). ELFM IV offers a total of 50 papers, grouped according to 4 thematic categories.

In this first EU MSCA-ETN SOCRATES Policy Brief, guest authors - Justin Salminen and Sirpa Olaussen from Boliden - provide their view on the challenges with respect to the zero-waste valorisation of low-grade ores and metal-containing industrial process residues.

Join us in Leuven on February 21 for a unique Symposium on the Social License to Operate for mining of critical metals. The Symposium is part of the Arts festival “Artefact 2018: This Rare Earth – Stories from Below”.

On 5 and 6 February, 2018, the 4th Enhanced Landfill Mining Symposium is taking place in Mechelen, Belgium. On January 15, 2018, the Final Symposium Programme was released: pdf available here. ELFM IV offers a total of 50 papers.

Enhanced Landfill Mining (ELFM) was featured in the Financial Times as one of the “50 Ideas to Change the World”. In a Special Report Joshua Jacobs interviews key players and discusses the barriers and opportunities for ELFM.

The EU FP7 EURARE project team has published a concluding project brochure, explaining how Europe can create a sustainable European rare-earth supply chain. A must read!

Gwendolyn Bailey, a KU Leuven researcher in the EU H2020 DEMETER project, presented her work at the high-level 7th Trilateral EU-US-Japan Conference on Critical Materials (October 12, 2017) in Pittsburgh, USA.

As part of “Artefact 2018: This Rare Earth - Stories from Below”, a unique symposium on the Social License to Operate with respect to the mining and recycling of critical metals is taking place on February 21, 2018 (Leuven).

During the annual JRC EU4Facts conference in Brussels, the EU MSCA-ETN DEMETER video was awarded as a showcase example on how science can contribute to evidence based policy making.