The agreement seeks to open up areas for cooperation that will benefit the creation of a technological impact ecosystem for the mining industry.

In order to strengthen the ecosystem of mining suppliers, the Open Innovation Program on Mining, Expande and the Integrated Piloting System for Mining Technologies, CIPTEMIN, signed an agreement that will enhance the exchange and transfer of technological knowhow as well as the establishment of collaboration networks between both institutions.

Within the framework of this agreement, Expande will present a broad-based network of suppliers, responding to the challenges faced by the mining industry, requiring areas for technological validation tests and protocols. Besides this, collaborative work will be going on with CIPTEMIN, analyzing the piloting needs of suppliers in the ecosystem.

On the other hand, CIPTEMIN will spearhead new or developed and tested technologies for Expande in order to link them up with the mining companies and partners in the program and thus complement the piloting service with that link.

For Enrique Molina, Executive Director of Expande, “this agreement will benefit the development of the suppliers’ ecosystem in the mining industry because it will allow them to access the final phase of their development which is: the validation, certification and packaging of a tech product”.

“in that sense then, we shall be complying with the role of identifying a technological solution that contains a certain degree of development, associate it with a challenge for the mining industry and recommend that it be validated and certified in the Pilotage Center of CIPTEMIN, in order for the public-private investment to come up with the value expected that justifies these types of initiatives, both for those developing the technologies as well as those seeking them”, added the executive.

So far as she was concerned, Cynthia Torres, Executive Director of CIPTEMIN assured that “by means of this alliance, we now have the opportunity to create a closer connection with suppliers and get to know the type of technologies they need to validate and certify. We also understand that the taxing problem faced by suppliers is gaining space where these technologies can be validated and so it up to us to place the Integrated Pilotage Center at their disposal”.

“Possessing these spaces, the step from validation and certification to the point of sale of a new technology is vastly reduced”, the director pointed out.