TRIESTE – Magellan Circle, a company of the Circle Group, has been awarded a European contract worth around €479,000 under the Horizon Europe CarMine project, an initiative aimed at strengthening Europe’s strategic autonomy in the recovery of critical and strategic raw materials.
The new 48-month assignment consolidates Circle Group’s presence in European Union-funded programmes dedicated to the circular economy, sustainability and industrial transition. The most significant aspect of the project concerns strategic raw materials, a topic that has become central to European industrial policies. CarMine aims to recover from end-of-life electric vehicles materials considered essential for the competitiveness of European industry, including lithium, cobalt, nickel and rare earths. These are key resources for the production of batteries, electric motors and advanced technologies, today largely imported from non-European countries.
The objective is to turn lithium-ion batteries and permanent magnets into real “urban mines”, reducing dependence on imports and increasing the resilience of European industrial supply chains. The project forms part of EU strategies linked to the Green Deal, the Critical Raw Materials Act and the new Batteries Regulation.
CarMine will adopt an integrated approach along the entire value chain, from vehicle dismantling to material recovery and the development of new components for batteries and magnets. Planned activities also include digital traceability systems based on the Digital Product Passport and sustainability analyses throughout the entire product life cycle.
Within the European consortium, Magellan Circle will be responsible for coordinating communication, dissemination and exploitation of results, as well as leading activities related to intellectual property, standardisation and market uptake of the solutions developed. «CarMine further strengthens our positioning in high-value European programmes and confirms our commitment to supporting the development of more sustainable and resilient industrial value chains», said Ana Paula Mesquita, managing director of Magellan Circle.
For Alexio Picco, managing director of Magellan Circle, the project is consistent with the group’s strategy of supporting the green and digital transition of logistics and industrial value chains, strengthening its international positioning.
