The EU was present at the PDAC convention for the third time. The EU had a booth and organised two events: a business and networking breakfast to promote the EU and Member States strategic interests in the exploration and mining sectors and a workshop to showcase H2020 and EIT Raw Materials selected projects for exploration and mining.

At the booth, we displayed materials and hosted EU member states’ representatives, SMEs, the EIT Raw Materials, H2020 projects and demonstrations of selected projects, EuroGeoSurveys and national geological surveys.

DG GROW used the presence in Canada to meet with a group of Canadian mining companies involved in CRM, notably on rare earth projects. Some of them have quite advanced projects and are already in contact with EU companies about technology support and potential investments/offtake. There was a strong interest from the Canadian companies as well as from the federal government to reinforce the supply of CRMs to Europe. Together with Natural Resources Canada, we will explore how to take this further, i.e. developing a trade and investment mission to create firm economic partnerships between Canadian CRM suppliers and EU mid-and downstream companies.