EU-funded certification for critical raw material supply chains

A critical mineral certification, MaDiTraCe, has been launched with EU funding.

MaDiTraCe – Material and digital traceability for the certification of critical raw materials – brings together an international team of universities, institutes and industry partners working to enlarge and integrate the portfolio of technological solutions reinforcing the reliability of critical raw material tracking.

The project officially started in January 2023 and is part of Horizon Europe, which is the EU’s key funding programme for research and innovation with a budget of €95.5bln.

It started with the goal of developing digital and geo-based approaches for environment, social and governance (ESG) standards for critical raw materials (CRM) and to integrate them with a generic certification scheme for CRMs, to ensure sustainable and transparent mineral supply chains based on generally accepted ESG-standards.

The project will be focused on materials essential to the energy transition: lithium, cobalt and natural graphite for batteries, and rare-earths for magnets.

The project will run until December 2025. It is coordinated by the French geological survey BRGM and 13 European partners.