 |
|
40+ Speakers, One Question: Can Stockpiling Fix What Permitting Can't?
|
|
Europe's Mining Reckoning:
Ten years ago, MINEX Europe began as a modest gathering in Vienna to discuss Europe's overlooked mineral endowment. This October, in Ireland, the 10th edition arrives at a very different moment - one in which the Critical Raw Materials Act has reshaped the policy conversation but has not yet answered the harder question of whether Europe can actually build the industry its climate and industrial strategies depend on.
The Forum's agenda is now live: three days of interactive sessions with the leading authorities and companies shaping Europe's sustainable supply of critical raw materials for the energy transition and industrial sovereignty.
|
|
|
|
Building the Foundations
Before the main programme opens, two full-day CPD workshops set the technical and communications groundwork. Satarla's Aileen Doran and Chris Stockey will lead participants through integrated risk management across the mining lifecycle - geopolitical, regulatory, climate and supply chain risk in one framework. In parallel, Satarla's founder and CEO Sarah Gordon, alongside Rose Clarke, will tackle a problem every developer recognises: how to tell a credible project story to investors, regulators and communities without straying into greenwashing.
|
|
|
The European Reckoning, and Ireland's Moment
The main agenda opens with the question that frames the whole event: can Europe actually rebuild its mining industry, or is legislation running ahead of industrial reality? Bernd Schäfer (CEO, EIT RawMaterials) and Åsa Edfelt (Chief of Staff, Boliden Mines) open the talks alongside the European Court of Auditors' own findings on the Critical Raw Materials Act, with Oliver Richards setting out the UK government's approach to critical minerals investment and Sean Xun presenting USGS's global minerals intelligence.
The second session, moderated by James Watson (European Metals), asks what "strategic project" status under the CRM Act is genuinely worth - a second wave of 161 applicants is about to test whether designation changes bankability or merely paperwork. Three developers make the case live: Kasperi Karhapää (Sokli) on Finland's flagship deposit, Andrei Degeratu (MPI Magnesium) on Romania's Valea Dobra project, and Joaquín Merino (Emerita Resources) on the Iberian Belt West.
The afternoon turns to Ireland. Policy with Mairéad Fitzsimons (DCEE), industry representation through Sean Finlay (Geoscience Ireland) and Emer Blackwell (Institute of Geologists of Ireland), and geoscience data infrastructure through Sarah Gleeson (iCRAG/UCD) and Koen Verbruggen's (Geological Survey Ireland) Tellus programme. The pipeline itself is represented by Ciaran McCreanor (Dalradian) and Aiden Lavelle, speaking both as General Manager of Northmin Corporation on the Tynagh Project and as President of the Irish Association for Economic Geology. The day closes with networking drinks.
|
|
|
Editorial Perspective
Europe's reckoning, in one speech
Day Two's opening session lands three weeks after a speech worth reading alongside it. In her State of the Union address on 16 September, Ursula von der Leyen announced a new European Corporation on Critical Raw Materials - beside a starker admission than Brussels has previously allowed itself: the EU remains over 80% dependent on China for many critical raw materials, and 90% for some rare earths. What the speech leaves out - mid-stream refining capacity, and the permitting timelines the Court of Auditors calls the binding constraint on delivery - is where the real debate starts. Keit Pentus-Rosimannus, the Court of Auditors member behind that report, presents its findings directly to this Forum on 28 October.
|
|
|
Financing, Energy Metals and Social Licence
Day Three is where capital meets geology. The morning session on project finance brings together David Riposo (World Resources Institute) on public finance's role in scaling responsible supply, alongside presentations on investment protection and bridging the mining finance gap by Chenyan Lyu (UKRI Critical Minerals Challenge Centre) and Scott Macpherson (Hogan Lovells Cadwalader), and a closing panel featuring Ayuna Nechaeva (London Stock Exchange) and Claudia Lakov (KfW IPEX-Bank) on what investors are actually pricing in. This runs into Europe's energy metals opportunity - an €300 billion gigafactory buildout against less than 8% domestic refining capacity - with André Månberger (Lund University), Laura Malkamäki (Hycamite TCD Technologies) and Antoine Gouze (Imerys).
The afternoon takes a turn few mining conferences attempt directly: social licence as industrial policy, not a communications afterthought, with Michelle Bennett (Boliden Tara Mines) and Sarah Gordon (Satarla) addressing the point head-on. The argument is that no permitting deadline will matter unless mining regains public legitimacy on the ground. This runs into a session on project design for permitting success - chaired by Satarla's Chris Stockey, with Andrew Bamber (Bara Consulting) and Ottomar Brussee (Boliden) among the contributors on engineering choices that improve the odds of approval - before the day closes with a session on AI and digital transformation across the mine-to-market chain, featuring Fernando Acosta (International Copper Study Group), Stefan Ebert (Digital Mine) and Manuel Regueiro y González-Barros (CSIC), and the Gala Dinner in the evening.
|
|
|
From Buyer to Builder
Europe is the world's second-largest consumer of critical raw materials, yet it extracts and processes only a fraction of what it uses. It has identified strategic projects - what it hasn't yet built is a repeatable system for turning them into industrial capacity at scale.
Finland offers a working illustration. More than half of the world's copper is produced using Finnish technology, and the country refines roughly 10% of the world's cobalt. Programmes like More than a Mine, run by Sokli Oy, suggest Finland is connecting research, industrial capability and public funding more deliberately than most of its peers. The open question: can that model scale into a repeatable architecture for financing, offtake and industrial deployment - the exact gap Europe's strategic-projects framework hasn't closed. Sokli Oy executives present this case directly on 28 October.
|
|
|
Why This Matters
Across ten sessions and three days, the throughline is consistent: Europe has the geology and, increasingly, the policy architecture. What remains unproven is whether it can convert either into operating mines on a timeline that matches its 2030 ambitions. That is the conversation MINEX Europe 2026 is built to have.
|
|
|
|
