Blue Mining: breakthrough solutions for sustainable deep sea mining

An international European consortium of 19 large industry and research organisations on various maritime fields of expertise, the “Blue Mining” consortium, will develop solutions that will bring sustainable deep sea mining a big step closer. In a duration of 48 months the “Blue Mining” project will address all aspects of the value chain in this field, from resource discovery to resource assessment and from exploitation technologies to the legal and regulatory framework. The project “Breakthrough Solutions for Mineral Extraction and Processing in Extreme Environment – Blue Mining” received funding from the European Commission.

The extreme conditions found on the deep-ocean floor raise specific challenges, both technically and environmentally, which are demanding and entirely different from land-based mining. Today, European offshore industries and marine research institutions have some global advantage through their significant experience and technology and are well positioned to develop engineering and knowledge-based solutions to resource exploitation in these challenging and sensitive environments.