Fortune Plastic and Metal Inc., Jersey City, N.J., has increased its presence in the electronics recycling market with the opening of a chemical precious metal refinery.
The new refinery is located at Fortune’s 100-acre recycling complex in Nanjing, China. Although the ISO 9000- and 14000-certified complex has been a destination for mixed plastic/metal scrap from North America for many years, the future of the refinery is in serving multinational companies with manufacturing capacity in China, according to Fortune’s Victor Ng.
The plant has been built in part as a response to an agreement with one of the world’s largest cellular phone manufacturers. The cell phone maker asked Fortune to design a safe, efficient plant, according to the company.
After designing such a facility, Fortune was rewarded with a contract to collect and recycle cellular phones in more than 100 cities in China. Fortune facilities in Hong Kong and Beijing will also help carry out the effort.
According to Ng, the facility’s pollution-less closed-loop process helps make it unique. The Fortune system recovers the plastics and non-copper but also eliminates the intermediate multi-facility steps (and smoke) previously needed to yield pure precious metals.
Many traditional precious metal processes involve incinerating the nonmetallics, then land filling the slag containing the non-copper metallics, yielding a small amount of precious metal in copper. Some processes use poisonous cyanides to selectively dissolve the precious metals.
Victor Ng hosted the director of China’s environmental agency, among others, at the facility’s recent opening. According to Ng, Fortune has a long relationship with the agency, many years ago being asked to open its doors to other recyclers as an example of how a recycling facility should operate.
Fortune is privately held, with 14 facilities serving the U.S., Mexico and China. Additional information on the company can be found at www.fortunegroup.net.