ASOCIACION DE SERVICIOS DE GEOLOGIA Y MINERIA IBEROAMERICANOS

Their core work

ASGMI is a Madrid-based professional association serving geologists, mining engineers, and employers across Ibero-American countries — Spain, Portugal, and Latin America. Their core function is connecting raw materials professionals with training opportunities, employers, and industry networks, making them a sector gateway rather than a research laboratory. In EU projects they contribute professional community access, dissemination reach into the mining and geoscience sector, and connections to practitioners who are neither academic nor large industrial. Their dual participation in a professional training network (intermin) and a zero-waste mineral processing project (AlSiCal) signals a broadening from workforce development into technical sustainability agendas.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Their first project (intermin, 2018) was squarely about people and networks — training centres, geologists, mining engineers, employers, and the international framework connecting them. By their second project (AlSiCal, 2019), the vocabulary shifted entirely toward technical sustainability: mineral processing, resources efficiency, low carbon print, zero bauxite residue. The human-network expertise has not been abandoned, but a clear layer of industrial process sustainability has been added on top of it. The direction is toward becoming a practitioner-community bridge specifically for the decarbonisation of the raw materials sector.

ASGMI is moving from workforce connectivity toward technical sustainability in mining, positioning itself as a community entry point for EU decarbonisation research that needs practitioner adoption and dissemination in Ibero-American markets.

How they like to work

ASGMI has never led an H2020 project — both participations are as a consortium partner, suggesting they are brought in for their network and community access rather than as a technical driver. Despite a small portfolio, they have accumulated 39 unique partners across 20 countries, which is unusually broad for two projects and indicates they join large, internationally diverse consortia. The likely value proposition to consortium builders is access to the professional geoscience and mining community in Spain and Latin America, plus dissemination reach that academic or industrial partners typically lack.

39 unique partners across 20 countries from just two projects — an exceptionally wide network for such a small portfolio, reflecting the large international consortia that raw materials and sustainability projects tend to attract. Their Ibero-American mandate gives them a distinct geographic anchor that differentiates them from purely European partners.

What sets them apart

ASGMI occupies an unusual niche: they are one of the few EU-funded-project participants whose mandate explicitly covers Latin America alongside Europe, giving consortium builders a single point of access to the Ibero-American geology and mining professional community. Unlike universities or research institutes, their strength is the practitioner community — working geologists, mining engineers, and employers — which matters when projects need real-world adoption or industry dissemination beyond the lab. For a consortium targeting sustainable raw materials, they offer legitimacy with working-sector professionals that technical partners cannot easily replicate.

Highlights from their portfolio

• AlSiCal
  The largest project by budget (€80,570) and longest duration (2019–2024), tackling one of the EU's most politically sensitive critical-materials challenges — eliminating bauxite residue (red mud) and CO2 from aluminium co-production.
• intermin
  An international network-building project (CSA scheme) that established ASGMI's role as a professional community bridge across geoscience training centres in Europe and beyond.