During this Period, the project performed the following activities:
- WP1: Three the Deliverables issued. To deliver D1.1 "Map of disruptions experienced so far by the Rail Supply industry and lessons for the future", a very thorough desk-research was done on industrial disruptions experienced in Europe and on European weaknesses in critical and strategic raw materials, including the analysis of EU policies and initiatives adopted to tackle such challenges. In parallel, a online pan-European survey in 9 languages on disruptions experienced by the Rail Supply industry since 2020 was run from November to December 2023. It was answered by 105 companies from 37 regions in 16 countries and provided as result that 58,1% of respondents have suffered/were suffering supply disruptions. The more statistical results of it were included in D1.1 while the more technical ones were included in the D1.3 "Supplies alerts for the future". This Deliverable went into more detail about the type of railway supplies affected by such disruptions, going so far as to list which end products are suffering from these difficulties. Finally, the D1.2 "Lessons on disruptions and resilience from other sectors" analysed sectors whose experience was considered useful for the Railway sector, i.e. Defence, Aerospace, Clean Technologies, Automotive to verify the possible existence of resilience patterns - which was not the case - and to identify possible alternatives and joint needs for possible cross-sectoral supply coupling on the market. All the three Deliverables provided key insights for the activities under WP3 and WP4.
- WP2: Starting from the detailed desk research on the EU-RAIL Master Plan and MAWP, the activity continued with the preparation of questions and run of one-to-one interviews to coordinators and/or partners of the then-running EU-RAIL Projects; the interviews were meant to challenge the results of the desk research with first-hand information on the status, outcomes, and future technological requirements of the projects, including raw material dependencies and supply chain implications. In addition, the interviews were also extended to other 24 key European industry players for a wider outreach and validation of the research outputs.
- WP3: The activities concerned the analysis on Raw Materials supply distortions, availability, accessibility and supply schemes, which mostly focused on the Raw materials resulting of necessary to the Rail Value Chain. Such identification was possible thanks to: (i) Deliverables D1.1 and D1.3 providing the specific railway needs in terms of raw materials necessary for both state-of-the-art and innovative rail solutions; (ii) the results of the conference “Mining meets railway technology” and the visit to Europe’s largest open-cast iron ore mine in Austria, organised by the WP Leader on May 27th-29th, 2024 to advance sectorial knowledge and awareness, analyse weak points, but also to point out undesirable developments to the responsible players in politics, business and civil society and raise their raw materials awareness; (iii) the desk research results done under WP2, plus the results from the interviews ran.
