Lekatech is leading the upscaling project ECHO as part of EIT Raw Materials. As a new bee to the network they decided to take part in two main events during the past month. It was nice to see that people have started to pick up traveling again, and especially to get to connect with people from various backgrounds in the mining area.
During the first months of the ECHO project Lekatech focused on getting to know their partners WUST, KGHM, MNLT and ISMC better, in order to get good collaboration flowing. Now it was time to boost dissemination activities and take part in events that offer good opportunities to get to know the EIT RM network better as well as interact with global players.
From 23 – 25 of May, Rob Moonen and Antti Anttila (CEO Lekatech) participated for 3 days in the EIT RM Summit in Berlin, where they attended the main conference, but in particular visited the Venture Forum to interact with startups, global OEMs, investors and end-users. While the pitches and presentations were interesting, the main value of this trip came in terms of interacting with people. Rob and Antti could clearly see the interest and focus of the green and digital transformation in the industry, and got confirmation from multiple players about the need for our solution.
From 14 – 16 of June they participated also in the Euro Mine Expo, after receiving an invitation from their EIT RM business developer, in the pitching session as well as the EIT RM booth. The trade fair gave them another opportunity to especially interact with industrial players while at the same time receiving more feedback on the challenges that mining operators are facing. For example currently mines are facing regularly during scaling operations the issue that hydraulic hoses are breaking, the need for extensive ventilation due to combustion engines, and the inefficiency of the hammering process. With their solution they are taking away those pains. On the second day of the event, Antti pitched Lekatech as part of EIT RM Exhibitor Innovation Forum.
See the link to the video below, which provides a good overview of our solution.
Exhibitor Innovation Forum 2022 Wednesday, June 15 – YouTube
All in all both events were very valuable. Besides raising awareness of the product and company it provided with multiple contacts of organizations with which various forms of collaboration are currently being explored.