The Italian ‘Ministry of  Economic Development’ has been involved in and is promoting a support  programme for all the companies that show an economic interest in starting business activities in the extractive industry abroad, in order to provide the supply of raw materials for internal, domestic purposes. The first milestone in achieving this purpose was the signing of an industrial memorandum of understanding, to establish some general guidelines for the extractive industry, during the governmental mission in Afghanistan in May 2011. The conference, promoted and managed by the Italian ‘Ministry of Economic Development’, the ‘Directorate-General for Mineral Resources and Energy’, ‘CRIET –the University Research Center for Economic Development’ and ‘Éupolis Lombardia’, has the aim of analysing the current needs of Italian companies and of underlining the main actions that could strongly advance the internationalization process, starting from the current international agreement signed by the ‘Ministry of Economic Development’.

The event is divided into two different sections:

• during the first part, the Italian ‘Ministry of Economic Development (ENEA)’, and the region of Lombardy will outline the new business opportunities for the extractive industry which are connected to the internationalization process;
• the second part will start with descriptions of some significant business experiences of some major industrial operators in the extractive industry in order to evaluate the needs of some specific business areas. The idea is to share knowledge and experience in order to encourage the extractive industry business and its operators to seize new opportunities of internationalization with a collaborative and supportive worldwide business model.