CINTEM – Circularity-Integrated Mining

Extractive waste poses environmental and social risks, in addition to lost economic value. The unique CINTEM approach reduces waste, improves material recovery, and enables sustainable, integrated mining solutions.

CINTEM project develops innovative ways of integrating mining projects into the circular economy already early on during the planning stages of an operation. This is achieved through utilising data flows from all stages of a mining operation – from early deposit models all the way to final mineral products.

Finnish research institutes and companies work together to develop circular data integration for deposit and mining models, improves processing and material recovery, creates new mineral products and business models, and advances mine‑site material cycles. the project involves close international collaboration, including partners in Chile and Australia.

The project is funded by Business Finland, and runs for 2,5 years, ending in June 2027.

Value Chain for Metals and Minerals

Only a small percentage of the material what is mined ends up as concentrate. Of this, only part becomes metal.

We concentrate our Circular Economy efforts on this often less than 1 % of the mined material. Keeping the non-renewable materials from mining in the Circular Economy loops for as long as possible is indeed crucial for sustainable mining.

However, in CINTEM we take a better look at the 98% of the original material.

The broad project is divided into sub-themes