A commercial facility for salvaging high-value metals such as gold, silver and palladium from electronic waste is being planned, after a partnership deal between two Kiwi companies.
Mint Innovation and Remarkit Solutions have signed a deal to build the factory and expand the company across the country, and then internationally.
New Zealand Cleantech company Mint Innovation has developed the low-cost recovery process using specialised microorganisms which purify the metals from e-waste in what chief executive Will Barker says is an environmentally benign process.
"Our team, led by Dr Ollie Crush, has successfully extracted precious metals on a small scale and it is now time to take the technology further," Barker said.
"It's very exciting for us - we have developed a technology that we are very satisfied can be scaled and taken global and the first step for us is to build a New Zealand facility," Barker said.
"We're currently looking at Wellington and Auckland [for the facility], and Remarkit as a leading e-waste recycler is a key partner to enable us to have access to the waste that we need to process."
Barker said the current process for most e-waste was for it to be broken into parts and sent to various areas of the world that could break it down into specific metals.
