Mitsubishi Materials establishes e-scrap business in Europe

The Japan-based global manufacturing firm Mitsubishi Materials Corp. (MMC) has established an electronic scrap recycling facility at the Port of Moerdijk, in Noord-Brabant, Netherlands. The goal of the new company, called MM Metal Recycling, is to capitalize on the growing amount of electronic scrap being generated in Europe. To accomplish this, MM Metal Recycling will build an electronics recycling facility that will be able to receive, inspect and sample electronic scrap and ship the processed material to MMC’s smelters and refineries in Japan.

MMC says the new company will expand its coverage of the electronic scrap recycling business throughout Europe. The facility, which is slated to open by the first half of 2017, will measure 30,000 square metres and employ about 50 people. The company expects to invest 4 billion yen ($39.3 million) to build the new facility.

The Dutch facility will include a receiving yard, sampling facilities, sample preparation facilities and a shipping yard.

To ensure the success of the new company, Mitsubishi has established a joint venture with the Japanese company Hanwa Co. Ltd. Under the arrangement, MMC will have a 90% stake in the joint venture, with Hanwa having a 10% stake.

In announcing the project, MMC says it plans to take advantage of the company’s process for continuous copper smelting, which the company says is a technology for smelting metals with the lowest environmental impact in the industry. The process includes smelting furnaces, slag cleaning furnaces and converting furnaces all connected by enclosed launders, continuously producing blister copper from concentrates. This results in a facility that is compact, conserves energy and operates at a low cost.

MMC says its unique process prevents sulfurous acid gas leaks, creating zero-emission processing plants with non-polluting systems that process efficiently unlike conventional processes, in which movement between the furnaces results in the unavoidable leak of sulfurous acid gas.

Adding to MMC’s emphasis on boosting its electronic scrap recycling capabilities, it also recently completed the expansion of its Naoshima smelter and refinery in Japan. The newly expanded Naoshima smelter, along with MMC’s Onahama Smelting and Refining Co. subsidiary, have increased the company’s consumption of electronic scrap by 30,000 short tons to 140,000 short tons per year.

From the perspective of the Dutch government, a key advantage of the location of the electronics recycling center at the Port of Moerdijk’s it that it allows MMC to quickly and easily ship the processed scrap to its smelters and refineries in Japan.

Ferdinand van den Oever, managing director at the Port of Moerdijk, says, “The arrival of Mitsubishi Materials Corp. is a welcome boost for our ambition to reinforce the existing recycling cluster, and, along with that, the circular economy.”

The entire site selection process was informed and guided by the Port of Moerdijk, Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency (NFIA), Brabant Development Agency (BOM) and Rewin.

The creation of the new company is a part of MMC’s plans to guarantee its smelters have an adequate supply of raw material, which includes expanding the collection of electronic scrap from outside Japan. To accomplish this, MMC also recently established a department for electronic scrap recycling business within Mitsubishi Materials USA Corp. to strengthen its electronic scrap collection system in the United States.