DEScycle secures £10.2m to revolutionise metal recycling technology

DEScycle, a deep tech company pioneering technology to recycle metals from electronic waste (e-waste), has successfully closed a £10.2 million Series A round.

The investment was led by BGF, with Berlin-based Vorwerk Ventures as co-lead. Incoming investors include Cisco Investments, Kadmos Capital, and Nesta. Follow-on investment was received from existing shareholders, including TSP Ventures, Green Angel Ventures, and CPI Enterprises.

E-waste is the world’s fastest-growing waste stream, with over $91 billion of e-waste produced in 2022, growing to $120 billion by 2030. Current recycling technologies are outdated, harmful to the environment, and difficult to scale. In addition, the pace of e-waste generation is outstripping the growth of recycling capacity by a factor of 5x (Global E-waste Monitor 2024).

DEScycle is delivering a clean, scalable technology that tackles this problem, creating local circular economies of recycled metals that reduce the reliance on international supply chains. The tech is based on a new eco-friendly class of chemistry: Deep Eutectic Solvents (DES).

Funds raised will be used to construct and operate a pre-commercial pilot plant at Wilton International in Teesside, UK. The plant will be instrumental in demonstrating DEScycle’s DES-based technology in a real-world environment, as well as providing the data for commercial scale-up.

Future plans include the opening of an e-waste recycling facility in Gateshead, with the support from DEScycle’s joint venture partner, GAP Group, one of the UK’s largest e-waste recyclers. The commercial-scale plant will be able to recycle 5,000 tonnes of e-waste per year, producing critical raw materials, including copper and palladium, as well as precious metals, such as gold, for industrial use.

DEScycle is a keen supporter of the UK as an innovation and technology hub, and the company plans to continue to develop and scale its technology within the country. In doing so, it will leverage the deep knowledge and infrastructure that exists through its relationships with the University of Leicester (where DES was discovered in the early 2000s) and UK Catapult organisation CPI (Centre for Process Innovation), as well as new relationships, such as Wilton International, which is part of the Teesside industrial cluster and provides access to a permitted site for scaling chemistry-based technologies.

DEScycle Chair, Ian Cockerill, said: “DEScycle has made significant progress over the last 18 months, and the successful closing of this funding round is a strong vote of confidence for the team, the technology, and our potential to revolutionise the metals industry. The business is paving the way for an environmentally responsible and profitable approach to metals recycling from e-waste. This is particularly relevant for growth areas, such as AI, which require a significant infrastructure rollout reliant on metals, all of which, due to their short lifespan, will be recyclable when DEScycle launches commercially.”