Recovering valuable metals from electronic waste.
Tell us about the business—what’s your elevator pitch?
Mint has developed a technology for quickly and cleanly recovering valuable metals such as gold and palladium from electronic waste. The vast majority of e-waste currently ends up in landfill or is exported to developing nations where it causes environmental and humanitarian catastrophe. Mint’s technology enables distributed recovery of value from electronic waste in the places where it is needed most. Our world-first recovery technology offers a number of advantages to recyclers, including higher returns for recycled materials and faster payouts while removing the complicated export logistics they currently face.
The Mint technology uses microorganisms to cleanly and selectively recover valuable metals mitigating the substantial environmental harm caused by existing recycling methods—reducing the need for energy-intensive virgin mined material and promoting a circular economy.
What was the inspiration for the business?
I am not a hard-out eco-warrior but strongly believe unless we all do our bit our planet is screwed. I’m originally a chemist and have spent a lot of time on the commercial side of biotech. I have been involved in cleantech for many years having previously worked at LanzaTech prior to their relocation to the US. The skills I have developed throughout a career in commercialisation are extremely well suited to the start-up scene and I am far happier working on an environmental solution rather than some social media nonsense.
How has technology helped?
We are in the IP intensive deep tech space so we don’t necessarily benefit from new technologies in the same way other businesses might. One marketplace that has been an enormous advantage for us—that is fully enabled by technology—is Ali Baba. You can literally source anything from China and have it delivered within weeks. This cost-effective and surprisingly high-quality solution has saved substantial amounts of cash and time—both of which are in very short supply in our line of work.
What’s been key to the business success so far?
As a startup company we need to scale quickly while mitigating investment risk. Following our last capital raise at the end of 2018, we have built the worlds first bio-refinery for recovering gold from electronic waste. This refinery is a test facility but is the same scale as fully commercial plants that can be established in cities anywhere in the world. This step enables us to talk with global customers and show the world we are serious about cleaning up the e-waste challenges.
What’s been the most exciting part of the journey so far?
We are a deep-tech startup so the team comprises primarily technical people—chemists, biologists, engineers etc—and almost exclusively aged under 35 (except me). Start-ups are a bit of a rollercoaster that carry substantial risk. However, I know the whole team get a tremendous kick out of working on a potentially game-changing technology and genuinely enjoy their work. The most exciting part of my role is creating the environment for the team to thrive.
How Important has the Icehouse Ventures Showcase been to your business?
The Icehouse Ventures team were very early supporters of ours—with a significant investment in our seed round back in early 2017. As such, we were well placed to participate in the Showcase as we looked to close our Series A round in ’18. We had a tremendous amount of interest generated through our involvement at the Showcase resulting in an oversubscribed round—pretty much the best outcome a founder can ask for. However, we also continue to enjoy the less tangible benefits a year on from the Showcase. We got to highlight our tech to many of Auckland’s highest net-worths and many still talk about us today. You can’t buy that sort of exposure.
What drives you personally?
It’s a terrible cliche but it is my family. I have two wonderful kids who are going to have to deal with the mess our generation and the generations before us have made. Again—I am not some hard-out eco-warrior, but if we can create something that addresses even a small portion of the damage our generation is responsible for then that’s what gets me out of bed.
What is your vision of the future?
NZ is extremely well placed to be developing world-changing clean technologies that will have a global impact. My vision is following the success of Mint—many more will be motivated to get started in the space and make real, tangible positive changes to our planet. Whether it is investors, researchers, supporter—whoever—the more support we have for cleantech, the better off our kids will be.
