A new strategic partnership between CEMI and CSIR aims to advance mining innovation and improve collaboration in the sector.
The CSIR Future Production: Mining cluster has recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI), an international mining innovation and commercialisation organisation based in Canada.
CEMI specialises in leading and coordinating the advancement of innovations that can be integrated into mining operations.
“Our vision is to solve the global mining industry’s challenges by accelerating the adoption of innovations for mining,” said Chamirai Nyabeze, CEMI’s Vice President of Business Development.
Expanding the mining innovation ecosystem
This newly established partnership seeks to expand the mining innovation ecosystem across countries and continents, fostering collaboration and knowledge exchange.
As part of this initiative, the CEMI team visited the CSIR’s Scientia campus to gain deeper insight into the organisation’s capabilities and explore potential areas of synergy.
Dr Motodi Maserumule, Divisional Group Executive for the Advanced Production and Security Division, welcomed the guests with an overview of the CSIR.
He expressed the organisation’s vision to be an accelerator of socioeconomic prosperity in South Africa through leading innovation, saying: “We achieve this by collaboratively innovating and localising technologies to provide solutions for the inclusive and sustainable advancement of industry and society.”
Bespoke innovations through collaboration
Sibongile Ntsoelengoe, Executive Cluster Manager for Future Production: Mining, presented the CSIR’s unique capabilities relevant to the mining industry, highlighting the organisation’s distinctive value proposition.
She emphasised that the CSIR’s strength lies in its multidisciplinary teams, which drive competitive advantage through bespoke innovations.
With nine industry-focused clusters, including CSIR Future Production: Mining, CSIR Defence and Security and CSIR Future Production: Manufacturing, the CSIR provides deep engineering expertise across various sectors.
She also underscored the strong alignment between the objectives of both organisations, which will be key to the success of the collaboration, commenting: “You will not find multidisciplinary teams of skilled and experienced professionals, supported by relevant infrastructure and systems, with a track record of translating industry challenges into bespoke solutions anywhere else.
“This is something we take great pride in at the CSIR, and it is an asset that our partnership with the CEMI and other collaborators can leverage.”
