The EIT RawMaterials Summit is taking place at The Egg Brussels, Rue Bara 175, 1070 Bruxelles, Belgium. This is an immersive experience and full participation requires attendance in person: for this reason we don’t offer virtual attendance options. The venue is fully accessible.
Summit Sessions
Built not planned: What Europe Can Learn from Japan, Australia and Canada on Financing Critical Materials Projects
Europe has no shortage of potential CRM projects. What it has consistently lacked is the financial architecture to get them built. While European projects stall in the valley of death between exploration and production, Japan, Australia and Canada have spent years constructing the policy and financing machinery to bridge exactly that gap.
Japan’s JOGMEC operates with patient, whole-of-value-chain state backing via equity, debt guarantees and offtake support; Australia stacks concessional loans, production tax incentives and a newly established national offtake authority; and Canada purposely built a C$2 billion Critical Minerals Sovereign Fund to provide the equity, guarantees and purchase commitments that commercial finance alone won't extend. The common thread across all three is unambiguous: strategic intent translated into purpose-designed instruments, with public risk absorption calibrated to unlock private capital at scale. This session brings together senior voices from Japan's METI and JOGMEC, the Australian government, and Canada's financing institutions to share hard-won lessons on instrument design, deal structuring, and public-private risk sharing — and to ask what it will take for Europe's own emerging architecture to match the scale of the challenge it faces.