Excir

Excir is a Canadian company developing technological solutions to extract precious metals including gold, palladium, and platinum from e-waste such as discarded mobile phones and laptops. The company’s patented hydrometallurgical processing technology allows processing e-waste and separating gold from other metals in seconds. The company claims that it can recover more than 99% gold from e-waste. Excir is also in the process of developing another patented technology to transform e-waste into usable consumer products by dividing it into three categories (precious metals, base metals, plastics). By using the company’s technology, it aims to reduce the use of cyanide in the mining industry to recover gold while serving the dual purpose of reaching a zero-landfill impact.

Excir announced signing an agreement with The Royal Mint (government-owned mint that produces coins for the UK), in October 2021, to introduce the former’s technology to help recover precious metals from e-waste such as circuit boards, discarded laptops, and mobile phones. The Royal Mint has utilized Excir’s technology at a laboratory scale, which produced gold with a near-perfect purity level, and further plans to reach mass production and scale the technology, to potentially recover other metals including palladium, silver, and copper​​.

Funding and financials

In January 2023 Excir received USD 1.9 million investment from the Canadian Government, to design and operate a pilot plant to demonstrate the effectiveness of the company's hydrometallurgical leaching technology in extracting precious metals from catalytic converters and e-scrap.