Australia’s MTM Critical Metals expects to move deeper into the large US e-scrap market with its proprietary Flash Joule Heating (FJH) technology after linking with a second waste recycler.
MTM said a five-year deal to secure up to 400 tonnes a year of “high metal content e-scrap” from Plastic Recycling mirrored its earlier letter of intent from Dynamic Lifecycle Innovations and supported its planned FJH demonstration plant start-up in Texas later this year. FJH is said to enable efficient, acid-free, high-throughput recovery of metals from complex waste.
“This second supply agreement is another critical milestone in executing our commercialisation strategy,” said MTM CEO Michael Walshe.
“Plastic Recycling brings scale, reliability and deep expertise in the US recycling ecosystem. With binding agreements from two major suppliers now in place, MTM is well positioned to deliver its phase one rollout and planned capacity expansions with reduced supply risk and enhanced commercial flexibility.
“Our one-tonne-per-day demonstration plant is being engineered with modular scalability in mind, enabling staged upgrades to significantly higher throughputs as feedstock volumes and market demand increase.”
Walshe said the two deals secured more than 1100t a year of high-grade, sorted electronic scrap. The sourced material included premium US-origin e-scrap such as circuit boards from cell phones, servers and laptops. It could position MTM as a key player in the reshoring of critical materials recovery in the US.
“As two of the largest e-scrap recyclers in the United States, PRI and DLI bring specialised capabilities and significant processing capacity to manage a wide range of post-consumer and commercial electronics,” MTM said. “Their facilities form a critical part of MTM’s infrastructure strategy to deliver a scalable, domestic solution for the recovery of metals.”
The company said recent analyses estimated that about 4.5 million tonnes of the 8Mt of e-scrap produced in the US each year was sent to landfill while some 2Mt was exported. Of this, an estimated 1.6Mt had metal-rich waste including PCBs from data centres, telecom, servers, laptops and industrial electronics.
“Globally, the UN estimates e-scrap contains over US$80 billion in recoverable metals annually, with gold comprising nearly half,” MTM said.
“PCBs typically contain 100-times more gold than mined ore, making this stream economically attractive.”
MTM said it was actively pursuing partnerships in other key jurisdictions with high per capita e-waste generation such as Japan, Taiwan and Europe. It said Australia produced more than 0.5Mtpa of e-scrap with low recycling rates and growing regulatory support.
