Royal Mint to recycle PCBs for gold
The Royal Mint, the UK's official maker of British coins, has opened a new factory in which it will extract gold from e-waste. Up to 4,000 tonnes of PCBs from e-waste are to be processed at the factory annually.
The latest business venture by the Royal Mint will create new jobs and also safeguard manufacturing roles for the future. The new factory also provides a more sustainable source of gold and reduces reliance on mining.
Located at its site in south Wales, the 3,700 square metre facility uses patented chemistry from Canadian cleantech company Excir, extracting gold from PCBs for products such as TVs, laptops and mobile phones, in minutes. Excir’s chemistry works at room temperature, creating a more energy-efficient and cost-effective method of gold recovery, a press release reads.
The factory has scaled the technology from laboratory to industrial level for the first time and has the capacity to process up to 4,000 tonnes of PCBs from e-waste every year. It provides the UK company with a new, more sustainable way to “mine” high-quality 999.9 purity gold. Recovered gold is already being used in a jewellery collection.
According to the United Nations’ Global E-waste Monitor, the generation of worldwide e-waste is rising by 2.6 million tonnes every year. A record 62 million tonnes of e-waste was produced in 2022, up 82% from 2010.
