Raw materials: EIT Awards ENEA and an international consortium a tender

The international consortium “RawMatTERS”, with the partnership of ENEA and some Italian universities and industries, has been awarded a tender for a €2 billion project to create 50 start-ups and 10 thousand jobs in the field of strategic raw materials. Furthermore, the reference project’s research pole for southern Europe will be located in Italy, at the ENEA Casaccia Research Centre in Rome.

Fostered by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), the call for tender is aimed at creating a “Knowledge and Innovation Community” (KIC ) to boost the sustainable extraction, recycling, reuse and substitution of ‘critical’ raw materials such as, e.g., rare earths, indium, germanium, and magnesium.

RawMatTERS brings together over 100 partners from 20 Member States. Besides ENEA, acting as main core partner, Italy is represented by: other core partners such as Trento Rise, ASTER, Marangoni, the Universities of Padova and Milano Bicocca; affiliate partners, i.e. Pirelli Tyre, Politecnico di Milano; Zanardi Fonderie; 16 project partners, mainly SMEs from Italy, Spain and Malta. Activities will have a 7-year duration, starting from January 2016.

“This is a victory for Italy and ENEA, which succeeded in gathering the efforts of all the major Italian actors around this strategic project, applying research and innovation to manufacturing industry’’, said Federico Testa, Commissioner of ENEA, emphasizing that in the field of materials science and technology, ENEA’s effort is mainly focused on research applied to the development of new materials and components. marco.vittori@enea.it