In Serbia’s industrial economy, electricity has quietly crossed a conceptual threshold. What was once treated as a stable production input—priced, contracted and accounted for much like water or basic logistics—has become a dynamic risk factor that shapes margins, operational decisions and long-term competitiveness. This shift is not the result of a single policy change or...
For decades, Serbia’s industrial model was implicitly designed around a power system that rewarded constancy. Factories ran continuously, furnaces stayed hot, production lines avoided stops, and electricity flowed as a stable background input. This logic made sense in a system dominated by lignite-fired power plants and large hydropower assets. Baseload generation rewarded baseload consumption. Predictable...
For most of the last two decades Serbia’s industrial competitiveness was framed around familiar variables: labour cost, tax stability, logistics access to the EU, and a reasonably priced electricity system anchored in domestic lignite and hydropower. Energy was important, but it was largely treated as a predictable input—cheap enough, stable enough, and rarely decisive on...
Europe’s decarbonisation agenda is accelerating faster in steel and metallurgy than in almost any other heavy industry. The European Green Deal, CBAM implementation, rising carbon costs, corporate ESG commitments, and trade-policy alignment with global decarbonisation frameworks have fundamentally changed the economics of metal production. Steel, aluminium, copper and high-alloy materials are all moving toward electrification,...
Europe’s industrial transition cannot proceed without rare-earth elements and the magnet materials derived from them. The motors that drive electric vehicles, the turbines that power offshore wind farms, the robotics systems that automate factories, the high-precision medical devices that support Europe’s healthcare sector, and the advanced defense technologies essential for NATO security all share a...
Europe’s drive for strategic autonomy in raw materials and electrification metals is entering a decisive phase. The continent’s ability to compete in processing—rather than just extraction or downstream manufacturing—will be tested by volatile electricity markets, reconfigured logistics routes, geopolitical fragmentation and intense global competition for midstream value creation. ReSourceEU has articulated Europe’s ambition, but the...
Europe’s race to rebuild its metals, minerals and advanced-materials ecosystem is reshaping industrial strategy across the continent. Smelters, refineries, processing plants, battery-chemical lines, recycling hubs and hydrogen-ready metallurgical facilities are now central to the EU’s competitiveness. Yet behind this transformation lies an often unspoken reality: Europe does not have enough engineering capacity to design, optimise...
Europe’s ambition to achieve strategic autonomy in raw materials does not rest on geology alone. It hinges on the continent’s ability to design, scale and industrialise the complex processing technologies that transform mined and recycled feedstock into high-purity, high-value metals. ReSourceEU sets clear quantitative targets for extraction, processing and recycling, but targets themselves do not...
Europe’s transformation into a battery-centered industrial economy has been faster and more disruptive than any other modern materials shift. The continent’s commitment to electric mobility, grid-scale storage, renewable-energy balancing, and electrified industry has created unprecedented demand for high-purity battery materials — lithium hydroxide and carbonate, nickel and manganese sulphates, cobalt intermediates, synthetic and natural graphite,...
Serbia stands at an industrial crossroads. The country has spent the past decade quietly building a reputation for engineering capability, design precision, and cross-disciplinary technical talent, yet has lacked the large-scale industrial framework required to transform this skill base into structured national advantage. As Europe accelerates its reindustrialisation around metals, materials, electrification and energy transition,...
