Spanish mining technology company specializing in hydrometallurgical processing, bioleaching, and critical raw materials recovery from low-grade ores and mine waste.
AGQ Mining & Bioenergy is a Spanish technical services company specializing in hydrometallurgical processing and the recovery of valuable metals from complex, low-grade, and waste mining materials. Their core industrial contribution is applying and validating metal extraction methods — including bioleaching, pressure leaching, and atmospheric leaching — at the bench and pilot scale within research consortia. In their most recent project, they expanded into critical raw materials (CRMs) recovery from mine tailings and wastes, integrating newer separation technologies such as nanofibrous composites, magnetic separation, and thermodesorption alongside electrochemical methods. They sit at the operational boundary between mining services, environmental remediation, and circular economy — bringing applied metallurgical know-how to validate what research partners design at the laboratory level.
Both INTMET (2016) and RAWMINA (2021) involve hydrometallurgical processing of polymetallic and complex ore/waste materials, covering pressure leaching, atmospheric leaching, and bioleaching routes.
Bioleaching appears as a core keyword in both projects, suggesting consistent and applied expertise across virgin ores (INTMET) and secondary mine waste materials (RAWMINA).
RAWMINA targets recovery of antimony, germanium, cobalt, and tungsten — all EU-listed CRMs — from mine wastes in a circular economy context.
RAWMINA introduced nanofibrous composites, magnetic separation, and thermodesorption to their technical toolkit, expanding beyond wet chemistry methods.
RAWMINA explicitly targets mine waste and wastewater in a circular economy pilot, signaling a strategic shift from primary ore processing toward secondary and waste-derived feedstocks.
In their first H2020 project (INTMET, 2016–2019), the focus was squarely on processing virgin polymetallic and low-grade ores — the keywords are all extraction-method terms: pressure leaching, atmospheric leaching, bioleaching, metal recovery. By their second project (RAWMINA, 2021–2025), the feedstock shifted from primary ores to mine wastes and tailings, and the method palette expanded significantly to include nanofibrous composites, magnetic separation, thermodesorption, and electrochemistry — alongside continuing bioleaching. The trajectory is clear: from conventional hydrometallurgy of primary ores toward multi-technology recovery of critical metals from secondary and waste streams, aligned with EU circular economy and CRM supply-chain policy priorities.
AGQ Mining & Bioenergy is moving deeper into critical raw material supply chains and mine waste valorization — a direction strongly aligned with EU strategic raw materials policy, making them an attractive partner for any consortium addressing CRM independence or circular mining.
AGQ Mining & Bioenergy has participated exclusively as a consortium partner — never as coordinator — across both H2020 projects, suggesting they function as a specialist execution partner rather than a project driver. Despite only two projects, they have accumulated 32 unique partners across 16 countries, indicating they join large, multi-partner consortia where their applied metallurgical capabilities fill a specific experimental or validation niche. This profile — deep technical specialism, no coordination ambition, large network exposure — makes them the kind of partner you bring in to provide industrial-scale testing or technology validation, not to manage the project.
Despite only two projects, AGQ has built exposure to 32 unique consortium partners across 16 countries — a notably broad network for a small project portfolio, reflecting participation in large, multi-partner Innovation Action and Research Innovation Action consortia. Their network is European in scope with no evident geographic concentration beyond their Spanish base.
AGQ Mining & Bioenergy occupies a specific and uncommon niche: an industrial company (not a university or research institute) that brings applied hydrometallurgical and bioleaching expertise directly into EU research consortia. This gives them credibility as the "industrial reality check" partner — capable of validating whether a laboratory-designed recovery process actually works at pilot or demonstration scale. Their combination of classical hydrometallurgy with newer physical separation and electrochemical methods, focused on both primary ores and mine wastes, positions them as a technically versatile contributor for any project touching mining, CRMs, or metal recovery from waste streams.
