The Royal Mint are setting up a processing plant designed to recover precious metals from circuit boards. We are going to partner with them to recycle all our boards. For more information on anything on WEEE recycling, sustainability and recovery, please get in touch.
Royal Mint to build plant to turn WEEE into gold!
The Royal Mint has announced plans to build a plant in Llantrisant, South Wales, to recover gold from waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE)
When the facility is fully operational in 2023, The Royal Mint expects to process up to 90 tonnes of UK-sourced circuit boards per week, generating “hundreds of kilograms” of gold each year.
Anne Jessopp, chief executive of The Royal Mint, said: “We are transforming our business for the future – expanding into areas which complement our expertise in precious metals, champion sustainability and support employment.
“Our investment in a new plant will see The Royal Mint become a leader in sustainably sourced precious metals and provide the UK with a much-needed domestic solution to the growing problem of electronic waste.”
Chemistry
The facility will use a “patented new chemistry” created by Canadian technology start-up Excir which targets and extracts precious metals from the circuit boards of discarded laptops and mobile phones.
Instead of WEEE leaving UK shores to be processed at high temperatures in smelters, The Royal Mint says, this will see precious metals recovered at room temperature.
The Royal Mint says the plant will be able to process an entire circuit board, while the chemistry recovers more than 99% of the gold contained within WEEE for use within the business.
Sean Millard, chief growth officer at The Royal Mint, said: “This approach is revolutionary and offers huge potential to reuse our planet’s precious resources, reduce the environmental footprint of electronic waste and create new jobs.
“We estimate that 99% of the UK’s circuit boards are currently shipped overseas to be processed at high temperatures in smelters.
“As the volume of electronic waste increases each year, this problem is only set to become bigger.
“When fully operational our plant will be the first of its kind in the world – processing tonnes of electronic waste each week and providing a new source of high-quality gold direct to The Royal Mint.”
Mark Wilding, Managing Director of Concept says “Concept are glad to be a part of it and see the potential both commercially and environmentally”