About the project
SUMEX is a 36-months project funded by the European Commission that has started on 1 November 2020. The project supports the set-up of a European sustainability framework to improve the permitting procedure along the extractive value chain (prospecting, exploration, extraction, processing, closure, post closure activities), to guarantee timely decisions, a transparent governmental regulatory regime, appealing financial and administrative conditions and sustainable natural environmental and social conditions. The main mission of SUMEX is to assist policymakers and other stakeholders in seizing this opportunity.
In order to foster more, but sustainable mineral production in the EU, SUMEX (SUstainable Management in EXtractive industries) will establish a sustainability framework for the extractive industry in Europe. It does so by considering the Sustainable Development Goals, the European Green Deal, as well as EU Social License to Operate considerations and will involve stakeholders from industry, government, academia and civil society backgrounds from all across the EU.
This framework is then applied across the extractive value chain to analyse the mineral, as well as relevant economic, environmental and social policy frameworks of the EU, member states and selected regions along five focus areas – socio-economic and environmental impact assessments, land use planning, health and safety, reporting official statistics and permitting processes/policy integration-to find, or build, where needed, good practices or tools for an open access toolkit, which will be embedded in a broader Community of Practise (CoP) and which forms the basis for capacity building. This CoP will consider relevant stakeholder groups, with a focus on permitting authorities, across the EU, providing a digital platform and using a series of workshops and webinars. In SUMEX, the experience from other projects like MINGUIDE, MINLAND, MIREU, STRADE builds a powerful foundation for addressing the challenge of how best to implement sustainability considerations into the whole raw materials value chain.
SUMEX Project
SUstainable Management in EXtractive Industries
Challenge: No common understanding of sustainable management in extractive industries
SUMEX supports the set-up of a European sustainability framework to improve the permitting procedure along the extractive value chain (prospecting, exploration, extraction, processing, closure, post closure activities), to guarantee timely decisions, a transparent governmental regulatory regime, appealing financial and administrative conditions and sustainable natural environmental and social conditions. The main mission of SUMEX is to assist policymakers and other stakeholders in seizing this opportunity.
Objectives of SUMEX
Strengthen policy coordination and agenda setting along the mineral extraction value chain
- Improve the understanding of mechanisms of horizontal and vertical coordination along the value chain
- Identify conditions that support the horizontal and vertical coordination and permitting procedures
- Foster agenda setting for mineral extraction
Propose a uniform EU sustainable management in extractive industries context
- Operationalisation of SD framework
- Identify needs and gaps in permitting and planning practise, regarding policy coordination and agenda setting
Cluster with other projects to identify good practices and good practise principles
- Clustering with projects based in the fields of mineral management, land-use planning, socio-environmental management to gain a comprehensive (holistic) perspective
- Foster strong meta research, to avoid duplication
Identify good practices and good practice principles for policy strategies and policy integration
- Identify good practises and principles for policy strategies and strategic approaches, coordination/integration and approaches and property rights regimes for different institutional systems
- Fill the gaps identified in the gap analysis from O2, through in-dept analysis of the use cases a) battery materials and b) construction materials
- Review and analyse mapped practices that lead to recommendations and training material
- Validate the results in peer learning workshops
- Identify stakeholder learning needs and requirements
- Foster decision making practices and decision quality by providing the online toolkit and testing it regularly during the project (based on the feed-back from the CoP)
- Establish a CoP via the Leaders & Learners League (3L) approach
Deploy an open access toolkit for capacity building across EU and with all stakeholders
- Support knowledge management and knowledge brokerage by 3L
- Evoke and establish interactive single-, double- and triple-loop learning, via digital and virtual training materials and social learning experiences
- Establish a three-step approach for horizontal and vertical policy learning through a series of different workshop types (a) needs analysis, (b) peer learning & validation workshops and (c) toolkit diffusion workshop and webinars
- Establish the self-sustainability of the digital platform
The Project partners
Montanuniversitaet Leoben (MUL; www.unileoben.ac.at) is well-known as one of the best universities in Austria and a “global centre of excellence” in the core disciplines focussed along the entire “value-added lifecycle” of raw materials, from exploration to extraction and mineral processing, followed by fields such as metallurgy, high-performance materials, process and product engineering, and finally, to environmental engineering and recycling. Close connection to and cooperation with industry (incl. SMEs) guarantees the stimulation and support of the entire innovation process in industrial companies as well as the successful exploitation of research results. One of MUL’s core objectives is to consider sustainability aspects throughout entire life cycles, all the way from raw materials to the finished product, on to disposal and, to close the loop, its recycling and reuse as secondary raw materials. 
The Oeko-Institut is an independent German research institute. About 140 researchers work in interdisciplinary project teams on environmental and social topics for national and international clients. In the sector of responsible sourcing and mining, the Oeko-Institut provides broad experience in national and international contexts. Oeko-Institut has been the coordinator of the Horizon2020 project STRADE “Strategic Dialogue on Sustainable Raw Materials for Europe”.
Tallinn University of Technology
Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech) was established in 1918 and is the leading engineering R&D institution in Estonia. The mission of TalTech is to support Estonia’s sustainable development through R&D and science-based higher education in the field of engineering, technology, natural and social sciences. In addition to the classification scheme (CERCS) T140 also other research fields are related to the energy research in TalTech (P305 Environmental chemistry, P360 Inorganic chemistry, P430 Mineral deposits, economic geology, T150 Material technology, T190 Electrical engineering, T270 Environmental technology, pollution control, T340 Mining, T350 Chemical technology and engineering, T370 Carbochemistry, petrochemistry, fuels and explosives technology).
Vienna University of Economics and Busines
With about 23,000 students the Vienna University of Economics and Business is the EU’s largest educational institution for business and economics, business law, and social sciences. The Research Institute for Managing Sustainability (RIMAS) at the WU conducts research and policy consulting projects covering inter-disciplinary issues such as Sustainable Development Strategies and Indicators, Sustainable Consumption and Production, Good Governance and Corporate Sustainability.
University of Lapland (LAY – https://www.ulapland.fi/EN) is a public university and the northernmost University in the EU as it is located at the Arctic Circle in Rovaniemi. It was founded in 1979 and has four faculties (art, education, law and social sciences) and three multidisciplinary research institutes, from which the Arctic Centre is the largest. The University has 5,000 under- and post-graduate students and 6,400 students in adult education, while the Arctic Centre has around 70 employees and a budget of 6.3 million euros annually.
Wageningen University (WU) was founded in 1918 and has since evolved into one of the world’s leading universities in the fields of life sciences and environmental sciences. Wageningen University’s researchers are active around the globe, and the university hosts students from over 100 countries. Its mission is to explore the potential of nature to improve the quality of life. The high quality of research at Wageningen University is crowned with the university’s position within the top 6 of the important citation indexes of its domain.
European Federation of Geologists
The European Federation of Geologists (EFG) is a not-for-profit professional geoscience organisation focused on the promotion of excellence in the application of geology, in raising public awareness of the importance of geosciences for society and in the setting and international benchmarking of professional standards and qualifications for geoscientists. Geoscientists play an essential role in research bodies, universities, mining companies, governments, not-for-profit/non-governmental organisations, as well in engineering and consultancy companies dealing with the challenges of fast-changing minerals’ supply chains at regional, country, and global levels. EFG is based in Brussels, was established in 1981 and its members are national associations of professional geoscientists. EFG membership covers today 27 European countries.
Boliden is a base metals company founded in 1924. Its core competences are within the fields of exploration, mining, mineral processing and smelting, but increasingly also sustainability and metal recycling. Boliden has more than 5,700 employees, organised into the business areas Smelters and Mines. Boliden owns and operates 6 mines or mining areas in Finland, Sweden and Ireland, mainly producing Cu, Zn, Pb, Ni, Au and Te concentrates. The company’s 5 smelters are located in Finland, Sweden and Norway. The annual turnover of the company is approximately € 5 billion. Boliden has an extensive R&D organisation of approximately 200 persons, both working with internal development projects and external publicly funded projects. Currently the external research portfolio exceeds 75 ongoing projects.
Union Européenne des Producteurs de Granulats
UEPG stands for “Union Européenne des Producteurs de Granulats” (European Aggregates Association) and is based in Brussels. Since 1987, UEPG has strongly promoted the interests of the European Aggregates Industry by representing its Members on economic, technical, environmental and health & safety policies.
UEPG pro-actively identifies EU initiatives and policies that are likely to impact on European aggregates producers. It provides Members with brief and concise information through regular publications and ad-hoc updates. UEPG also positively promotes the profile of the European Aggregates Industry.
DGIEM is the Regional Mining Authority in Andalusia. It is part of the Regional Ministry of Finance, Industry and Energy.
The SUMEX cube
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‘This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement nº101003622.’
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