E-waste recycler Mint raises $60m Series C - why it’s still favouring offshore plants over NZ

Auckland-based Mint Innovation's first e-waste "biorefinery", located in Sydney, will generate its first revenue from next month. The firm says it will process around 4000 tonnes of e-waste per month, with around $60m in revenue per year. Photo / Supplied

(Update: Mint opened its first commercial-scale biorefinery plant in Sydney in April 2024. In December, it said it had secured land for its second plant, in Longview, Texas. The facility is expected to open in late 2025.)

E-waste recycler Mint Innovation has closed a $60 million Series C funding round - at the top end of its public $40m - $60m target despite the venture capital slowdown.

The startup is refusing to give a post-money valuation - making it hard to call it a definitive win - but claims it’s “three or four times” its previous raise (Mint staged a $20m Series B round in 2020, lead by Wellington-based Movac with a $9m commitment and supported by Icehouse Ventures, and others; no valuation was given. A Series A round raised $6m).

With help from grants from Crown-backed Callaghan Innovation, Mint developed a “biological technology” for covering the innards of used smartphones, laptops and other e-waste in a gloop that extracts gold and 40 other valuation materials. Such e-waste was always valuable, but pandemic-era supply chain issues, tightening regulations in many countries and the conflict involving Russia and Ukraine (both home to a number of rare elements used in electronics) have heightened their worth.

It opened its first “biorefinery” in Sydney in August last year. Co-founder Will Barker said Mint favoured Sydney over its hometown of Auckland in part because Australia has tougher e-waste laws (e-waste recycling is compulsory across the Tasman, unlike NZ), in part because Sydney’s scale, and in part because Mint scored a A$4 million Australian Federal Government grant, which covered around 40 per cent of the cost of building the Aussie plant.

Auckland-based Mint Innovation's first e-waste "biorefinery", located in Sydney, will generate its first revenue from next month. The firm says it will process around 4000 tonnes of e-waste per month, with around $60m in revenue per year. Photo / Supplied

In August, Movac partner David Beard told the Herald that while his firm was keen to support Mint’s Series C raise (which it has), he was also keen for a new investor to come onboard to support international expansion - particularly Mint’s planned push into the UK and the EU (where, like Australia, e-waste rules are far stricter than NZ).

And indeed the Series C round revealed this morning featured new blood; it was led by is led by Inspire Impact, the impact investing arm of Australian-based firm Liverpool Partners which has around $A1.0 billion of assets currently under management. The supporting cast was more familiar, including the aforementioned Movac and Icehouse, plus one of Mint’s earliest supporters - Sir Stephen Tindall’s K1W1.

Mint confirmed today that its second plant will be in the UK, “closely followed by the US or Europe”.

The new funds will also be used to bump staff numbers from 40 to 50.

An NZ plant?

When will we see a Mint biorefinery in NZ?

The firm is keen on a conceptual level, but nothing is on the immediate horizon.

“There is certainly an opportunity to build in NZ and we will work with local government on a plan of what that looks like. However, right now we are pursuing larger opportunities in other key locations around the world,” Barker told the Herald this morning.

Earlier, Movac’s Beard said, “With all these sorts of things, you’ve got to put the plants where you have the least amount of friction and the highest possible return. You need both financial and regulatory support.

Another view of Mint's Sydney plant. Its next biorefineries will be in the US and Europe. There are no immediate plans for a plant in NZ, where the market is smaller and e-waste recycling rules are looser than the likes of Australia and the EU. Photo / Supplied

“In Australia, it’s illegal to dump e-waste into a landfill and there’s a really strong recycling community.”

Here, the Government and many councils encourage e-recycling, but it has been estimated that 98 per cent of our e-waste goes into landfill - which, apart from wasting valuable materials, is problematic for the environment.

“We’d love to have a New Zealand plant but this could be a bit of a wake-up call for NZ,” Beard said.

Sydney plan - and $60m/year in revenue - about to go online

The ribbon was cut on the Sydney biorefinery last August, but Barker updated this morning that it will only start to be revenue-producing from next month when it starts accepting e-waste to be processed.

This facility will serve the whole of Australia - at least in the short term - and will be capable of processing about 4000 tonnes of e-waste each year, Barker said.

Mint Innovations co-founder and chief executive Will Barker - previously a vice president with NZ-founded, now US-based clean energy firm LanzaTech. Photo / Supplied

The majority of the value recovered is from gold, and about 20 per cent of the value from copper.

“Once the Sydney facility is at full capacity, we expect it to generate about $60 million in revenue each year,” Barker said.

“With our expansion across other key markets over the next two years, we expect to at least break even during that timeframe.”