Mitsubishi partners on e-scrap metals recovery
Mitsubishi is expected to support marketing and sales of critical and precious metals produced using the DEScycle platform through its global trading operations.
SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): Positioning a new recycling technology aimed at extracting valuable metals from one of the world's fastest-growing waste streams, London-based DEScycle has entered into a strategic partnership with Mitsubishi Corp. to advance the recovery and processing of metals from electronic scrap in Japan.
Founded to develop cleaner alternatives to conventional metallurgical processing, DEScycle is building a metals recovery platform based on ionometallurgy – a solvent-based approach that replaces traditional high-temperature smelting and acid-intensive refining with processes built around deep eutectic solvents, a type of non-toxic liquid salt used to dissolve and recover metals.
These salts enable metals extraction at lower temperatures and with reduced energy requirements, offering a pathway to recover valuable elements from complex waste streams while lowering the environmental footprint typically associated with metals processing.
Among the most promising applications for the technology is electronic waste, a rapidly expanding global waste stream that contains significant quantities of critical and precious metals embedded within discarded electronics and printed circuit boards.
Under the agreement announced March 9, DEScycle and Mitsubishi have selected one another as preferred partners for the Japanese market, where they plan to jointly develop opportunities to recover metals from e-scrap using the company's processing platform.
By combining DEScycle's proprietary technology with Mitsubishi's global trading network, operational capabilities, and established customer relationships, the companies aim to accelerate commercialization of recycled metals recovered through the process while expanding Japan's circular economy for critical materials.
Mitsubishi is expected to support marketing and sales of critical and precious metals produced using the DEScycle platform through its global trading operations while also exploring additional investment opportunities tied to potential future deployments.
'DEScycle's technology has great potential in the Japanese market to advance resource circulation and sustainable metals recovery, and we view this partnership as an important step in exploring its application in Japan,' said Toshihiko Satomi, senior vice president and general manager of the Mineral Resources Group CEO office at Mitsubishi Corp.
The collaboration builds on Mitsubishi's investment in DEScycle in 2025 and comes as the company advances development of a demonstration plant in the United Kingdom designed to validate and scale the technology for broader commercial deployment.
'Partnering with Mitsubishi enables us to explore opportunities to deploy our platform in Japan, which is known for being a global leader in e-waste recycling,' said Fred White, co-founder and chief commercial officer of DEScycle. 'Alongside the U.K. and Japan, we aim to expand into the U.S. and Europe, replicating this model through distributed, repeatable deployments, capturing above-ground resources of critical materials and unlocking sovereign supply chains.'
Courtesy: www.metaltechnews.com