CEMI updates on MICA, SMEs, and critical minerals

The Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI) has been working towards solving mining challenges for the past 15 years – and they’re not slowing down any time soon.

According to Charles Nyabeze, vice-president of business and development and commercialization, CEMI was established in 2007 to solve the challenges of the mining industry by advancing innovation, which impacts the triple bottom line of the industry – environmental, social, and economic.

On July 13, the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, announced a $40 million investment into a sustainable mining project from CEMI called the MICA (Mining Innovation Commercialization Accelerator) network, created by CEMI in partnership with six main partners from across Canada: the Bradshaw Research Initiative for Minerals and Mining (BC), innoTech Alberta (AB), saskatchewan Polytechnic (sK), MaRS (ON), Groupe MISA (PQ), and the College of the North Atlantic (NL).

“That MICA Network was funded by the government to accelerate innovation into the mining industry,” Nyabeze explains. “CEMI put together a proposal to the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, and we received $40 million. Our hope is to leverage that $40 million into over $112 million over the next five years.”

The MiCA network received its first proposals in March 2022. They had a deadline of April 25 for MICA members to apply for access to those funds for their technical projects. So far, CEMI has received over 80 project funding requests from across the country under the following four technology themes:

1) Increase mine production capacity at a lower cost.

2) Reduce mining energy consumption and GHG emissions.

3) Implement smart, autonomous mining systems.

4) Reduce environmental risk and long-term liabilities.

The goal of MICA is to bring together an innovation ecosystem across Canada to support mining innovation, offer commercialization, and provide dollars into supporting the technical projects at a readiness level of five-plus. in short, CEMI is looking to move projects that already have momentum in the mining industry through this network.

“What we realized was that the mining industry was not fully benefiting from all the innovations coming out of the Canadian innovation ecosystem,” Nyabeze says. “MICA is the vehicle which will help identify those many Canadian innovations with commercialization ready mining applications.”

This investment in MICA is also helping to advance the development of the critical minerals supply chain. Critical minerals are essential for clean technologies in areas such as alternative building materials, harnessing wind energy, solar panels to the development of the whole battery supply chain for electric vehicles (EVs).

“There are current and looming shortages of minerals out there that are essential in electrification and in building the low carbon economy,” Nyabeze says. “These minerals and metals are the key to building the future.”

Where does CeMi fit in all of this? Nyabeze says the organization and the MICA Network are available to accelerate the technologies that enable the critical minerals industry. For example, small- to medium-sized enterprises enable technology that allows for the efficient extraction of minerals and are creating new solutions to enable the opening of new sustainable mines.

“Through MICA, we are well-positioned from a national level to lead this country in directing resources that are key to how Canada addresses commercialization into the mining industry,” Nyabeze says. “If this nation secures, exploits, and extracts value from critical minerals, then there needs to be a supply chain of technology to help with how that happens. CEMI, through MICA, is able to identify emerging crosssector technologies and help them by giving them a network of like-minded people with whom to share knowledge, bestpractises and experiences that enable the acceleration of innovation into the Canadian mining industry.”