The 9th MINRESCUE project meeting and MINRESCUE symposium were successfully held at GIG (Katowice, Poland) on 15th and 16th June 2023. One highlight of this gathering was a technical visit to Piast-Ziemowit underground coal mine where project participants were officially welcomed and given an introduction to the mine, its history and culture, followed by a trip underground to observe an actual longwall mining in operation.

In addition, the long-awaited MINRESCUE symposium were attended by well over 50 participants from industry, academia and other stakeholders from across Poland, as well as being broad-casted to a large number of international audiences. The primary objectives and main results of MINRESCUE were delivered succinctly in six presentations, each 20 to 30 minutes, followed by technical discussion.

The 8th MINRESCUE progress meeting has been successfully organised by BRGM in Paris on January 27th, 2023. As partners are busy preparing for the 9 Deliverables that are to become due in over a month time, this meeting was much needed (for us to clarify those results that are ready to be included in the Deliverables and those that are not quite ready). Overall, it can be summarised that all partners are on track to deliver their contributions in due course.

Moreover, the major results of MINRESCUE will be disseminated in a Symposium in June 2023. The time and location, size and mode, and the logistics of the Symposium were discussed during the progress meeting. Further details on this Symposium will soon be made available soon.

In other news, Dr Agnieszka Klupa, GIG representative, has presented the MINRESCUE results on 10th November 2022 during expert seminar organized jointly by the Polish Society for Mineral Processing and GIG at the Barbara Experimental Mine.

September and October 2022 have been busy months for MINRESCUE consortium. In addition to organising an industry-orientated workshop and the 7th progress meeting at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain, on 29/09/2022, GIG has presented MINRESCUE works at the 5th Polish Mining Congress in Katowice, Poland, on 07/09/2022, and SUBTERRA has presented MINRESCUE works at Mining and Mineral Hall (MMH) in Sevilla, Spain, on 18-20/10/2022.

SUBTERRA, on behalf of MINRESCUE consortium, has successfully organised an industry-orientated workshop at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid on 29/09/2022. The workshop was delivered in-person and in virtual mode to a large number of audiences (across both industry and academia) from all over the world (> 800 full-duration streams). The workshop was followed by the 7th progress meeting of MINRESCUE.

The 6th MINRESCUE meeting was successfully held at the School of Engineering, the University of Warwick on the 4th and the 5th of July 2022. It was the 2nd face-to-face progress meeting since the start of the project (September 2020), and this time, organised without any significant disruption caused by the Covid 19 pandemic. This gathering of over 20 participants at Warwick University (with the remaining few joining online) has generated many fruitful discussions and collaborative ideas, and provided additional motivation for us to meet the project's Deliverables. The date of our next in-person meeting/workshop (hosted by Subterra in Spain) has also been fixed.

The geotechnical team from Warwick University has successfully obtained additional Coal Mining Waste Geomaterial (CMWG) from a local UK site (Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Council, Wales) for MINRESCUE project. In the coming months, the CMWG will be mechanically & chemically characterised, and incorporated into higher value-added construction products. The performance of these CMWG-bearing construction products will then be examined carefully in our geotechnical laboratory.

The 4th MINRESCUE meeting was held on the 30th September and 1st of October 2021