Chile-Finland Platform lands in Tarapaca: Mining and circular economy emerge as focuses of technological cooperation
The initiative driven by Corfo and Business Finland has projected funding of US$50 million and aims to accelerate co-innovation projects, technology transfer and clean technologies between both countries. In Tarapacá, the focus will be on linking universities, mining companies, and regional capabilities such as CircularTec.
Tarapacá, August 2026.- The Chile-Finland Platform for Development and Technological Transfer begins to extend its deployment to the regions. Tarapacá seeks to join this binational initiative with the aim of connecting its capabilities in mining, research, innovation, and circular economy with the Finnish technological ecosystem.
The advancement was presented by Andro Lindsay, expert from the Finnish research center VTT Research, who met with regional authorities and university representatives to discuss the opportunities opened by the platform and ways to incorporate it into the Tarapacá entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystem.
The initiative, driven by Corfo and Business Finland and executed by Fundación Chile and VTT Research, aims to enhance co-innovation, facilitate the scaling and validation of clean technologies, and create new instances of knowledge transfer between Chile and Finland.
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One of its central components will be to connect complementary capacities of both countries: the Finnish experience in applied research and technological development with the conditions offered by Chile to test, validate, and scale solutions in strategic productive sectors.
Lindsay explained that the platform is aimed at applying Finland's experience in transforming a natural resource economy into a knowledge-based one, using Chile as a natural laboratory to validate technologies.
Mining and Circular Economy: Opportunities for Tarapacá
The meeting was led by Senator Renzo Trisotti and included the participation of Government authorities and representatives from regional universities. The conversation focused on how to incorporate public and private actors from Tarapacá into future platform projects, particularly higher education institutions, technological centers, and large mining companies.
Mining emerges as one of the areas with the greatest potential for this collaboration. The region concentrates large-scale operations and, at the same time, research and development capabilities linked to challenges such as circular economy, efficient use of resources, decarbonization and new technologies for more sustainable mining.
In that context, CircularTec could become one of the regional players capable of linking projects and technologies with the needs of the industry.
Spartacus Ferrari, regional director of Corfo, highlighted that the initiative is projected for five years and is currently in the execution phase.
"In this five-year program, which is currently in its active execution phase, the Chilean Government, through Corfo, contributed US$20 million using resources from the lithium R&D contracts. Therefore, it is a great opportunity to integrate important companies in the region and also to promote the CircularTec center," said Ferrari.
US$50 million to connect the ecosystems of Chile and Finland
The Chile-Finland Platform anticipates a projected global financing of US$50 million, considering the Chilean contribution, resources from Finland, and the mobilization of other financing sources.
The initiative recently entered a new phase with the establishment of its Strategic Committee, an entity responsible for guiding the program and assessing the alignment of its various work streams and project portfolios.
Parallelly, the technical team is working on the preparation of the first co-innovation calls, which will be aimed at startups, companies, universities, technological centers, and pilot testing spaces.
With the incorporation of Tarapacá, the platform aims to begin grounding the Chile-Finland cooperation in the territories and connecting concrete productive challenges with international technological capabilities, opening an opportunity for the region to not only adopt technology, but also participate in its development, validation and scaling up.