Matt Bedingfield spent seventeen years in metals and recycling — Novelis, Tri-Arrows Aluminum, then Wieland, where he built a $100 million-plus secondary copper refinery in Kentucky and won a $270 million federal grant for a fully integrated US copper smelter that never got built. He is now Global CEO of Mint Innovation, which recovers copper, gold, silver, tin and palladium from scrapped printed circuit boards without a smelter at all. In this episode he explains the first certified closed-loop copper batch with HP, why rare earths still end up in someone else's slag, and the number that reframes the entire recycling argument: e-waste is fifty to a hundred times more concentrated than mined ore.
Old HP Laptops, New HP Laptops
Mint's process is hydrometallurgical and batch-continuous — a break sits between each batch running through the plant. That break is what makes traceability possible. Mint took end-of-life HP assets, ran them as an exclusive batch, and sent the recovered copper back to HP, where it went into the EliteBooks announced this year. As Bedingfield puts it: old HP product made new HP product, and it is truly a closed loop for HP.
Copper was where the partnership started. Mint also recovers gold, silver, tin and palladium off the same boards, and those conversations are now underway.
Why the Urban Mine Doesn't Pay on Rare Earths Yet
Rare earths are not in every e-waste stream, and the traditional route — pyrometallurgical smelting — loses them to the slag. That is why they have never been payable items in e-waste refining. The stream itself is changing: haptics, hard drives and their magnets are putting more rare earth content into the mix every year.
Mint does not recover rare earths today. What it can do is concentrate a rare-earth-bearing stream and hand it to specialists recovering those elements by chromatography or other processes. Bedingfield frames this as the shape recycling has to take: a byproduct of one company's process becomes the feedstock of the next, because no single technology handles the whole periodic table.
Fifteen Months and $45 Million, Not Seven Years and $1 Billion
Bedingfield's previous answer to the same problem was a conventional smelter: roughly seven years to build, about a billion dollars, and a permitting fight. A Mint biorefinery takes about fifteen months and roughly $45 million, drops into about 100,000 square feet of existing warehouse space, and runs at ambient temperature — which is why the permitting hurdle is so much lower. Founder Will Barker's description, which Bedingfield borrows: it looks like a microbrewery on steroids. Tanks, vats and pumps, with shredders and sorters on the front end. Chemistry capacity runs around 4,000 tons a year, which works out to 8,000 to 10,000 tons a year of circuit board feedstock.
Why Every American Circuit Board Still Leaves the Country
Roughly 900 e-waste recyclers operate in the United States. They collect the material and break it down to commodities — and then almost all of it is exported, because the refining capability to finish it left the country about twenty-five years ago. One smelter is running in southeast Georgia, and Korea Zinc has announced another in Tennessee, but Bedingfield says it is nowhere near enough. His summary of the round trip: that's a lot of time on the road and on the water.
The Framing That Survives an Election
Recycling has historically been sold as altruism. Bedingfield's line is that metals recycling is where the right thing meets the profitable thing — and that nothing is sustainable if it isn't profitable, because eventually the subsidies run out. That gives the sector a rare advantage: with one party in the White House he can talk sustainability, jobs and emissions; with the other he can talk national security, critical minerals and domestic manufacturing supply. None of it is disingenuous, and both are true. His warning is about continuity — the sector cannot survive the policy whiplash it has seen before, and the rebuild will take multiple administrations.
Key Takeaways
- E-waste is 50 to 100 times more concentrated than mined ore: it is already out of the ground, already in the country, and unlike an orebody it replenishes with every data center refresh and phone launch.
- Closed-loop copper is now certifiable: batch-continuous hydrometallurgy lets Mint trace a specific waste stream through to a specific product, which is how the HP batch worked.
- Rare earths remain a handoff, not a product: Mint concentrates them for specialists rather than recovering them, while conventional smelters lose them to slag entirely.
- Build economics are the real unlock: fifteen months and roughly $45 million at ambient temperature, against seven years and a billion dollars for a conventional smelter.
- Recycling supplies an estimated 10 to 20 percent of critical mineral demand: not a replacement for mining, which is why Bedingfield calls it an AND problem rather than an OR problem.
- Profitability is the durability argument: a sector that pays for itself survives changes of administration in a way a subsidized one does not.
FAQs
What does Mint Innovation recover from e-waste?
Copper, gold, silver, tin and palladium, recovered from scrapped printed circuit boards using a hydrometallurgical, biosorption-based process that runs at ambient temperature rather than in a high-temperature smelter.
Does Mint Innovation recover rare earth elements?
No. Mint does not recover rare earths today. It can concentrate a rare-earth-bearing stream, including magnets sorted out on the front end, and pass it to specialists who recover those elements by chromatography or other technologies. Conventional pyrometallurgical smelters lose rare earths to the slag altogether.
How much of critical mineral demand can recycling supply?
Bedingfield cites estimates as high as 10 to 20 percent. He agrees the United States cannot recycle its way out of the problem, and argues recycling, mining, smelting and new rare earth recovery technologies all have to be built at once.
Why is US e-waste exported instead of refined domestically?
About 900 US e-waste recyclers collect and break down material, but the refining capacity to finish it left the country roughly twenty-five years ago. The commodities are shipped overseas and, as Bedingfield puts it, ultimately we hope they come back.
Where is Mint Innovation building in the United States?
Longview, Texas is Mint's first US site. The company is headquartered in Auckland with around fifty people across Auckland, Sydney and the US, and is raising capital to begin the US build-out.
Transcript
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Dustin Olsen (00:01)
Hi Matt, welcome to the Rare Earth Exchanges podcast. How are you doing?
Matt Bedingfield (00:04)
I'm doing great, Dustin. Thanks for having me on. Excited for the conversation.
Dustin Olsen (00:08)
Absolutely. We're excited to unpack all the exciting things you guys are doing over at Mint and how it relates to rare earths and critical minerals. Before we get into some of that, one of the first things I want to unpack — because we don't hear about it too often here on the show — is the agreement you have with HP, and how you guys are able to recycle different metals off of their circuit boards. I'd love to hear from you: what does that look like? What did you have to do to create that partnership with them? And what does the facility look like to be able to recover those?
Matt Bedingfield (01:01)
Yeah, sure. HP's been a great partner as we've been working to bring that to full commercial scale. HP, like many other electronics OEMs, are very much trying to take a responsible approach to their supply chains, making sure their end-of-life assets are responsibly handled and that they're doing their part to bring what has been considered waste up till now back into the supply chain to make the next generation of products. The very nature of our process, being hydrometallurgy, is that we're sort of batch continuous. By that I mean we have a break between each batch that we put into our process. So if I look towards our Texas facility that we're raising capital for now, we may have twelve or thirteen or fourteen batches going through our plant at the same time. However, there is a break. So you can tell that these printed circuit boards went into this batch from these sources. That's the nuance of what they call the first certified closed-loop copper for HP. What we've done is we've taken end-of-life HP assets, put those exclusively into a batch, followed those through our process, and then the copper that comes out on the back end now goes into their new products. That's what's going into the new EliteBooks that they announced this year. So they can say that old HP product made new HP product, and it's truly a closed loop for HP.
Dustin Olsen (02:33)
That's really exciting. You mentioned copper — is there anything else you're pulling off these boards, or able to recycle with your hydrometallurgy process?
Matt Bedingfield (02:45)
Sure. We're able to recover copper, gold, silver, tin and palladium. HP's first interest was around copper. Now we're talking about other metals — obviously if those metals are coming off their circuit boards, it's a part of their supply chain. It's really easy to get caught up in the complexity of these products, so you've got to take one step at a time. Copper's just where we started with them.
Dustin Olsen (03:10)
Gotcha. Just really quickly — this claim that HP products made HP products. Is one recycled circuit board able to create one circuit board, or are more materials required to create a brand new circuit board? Do you know?
Matt Bedingfield (03:35)
Well, there are a lot of different materials that go into circuit boards, and the copper content for every circuit board, the gold content for every circuit board, is going to vary. If we're just talking copper to copper, and you're able to recover all the copper going into like-to-like circuit boards, then you should be able to have close to that one-to-one relationship. But you never know what board it's going into. So on the front end we try to homogenize our feedstock enough that our chemistry behaves the same way on every single board that comes in. It's very difficult to draw that one-to-one printed circuit board to printed circuit board piece. But conceptually, I don't see why not, so long as the content is the same.
Dustin Olsen (04:18)
That makes sense — that was a digression for sure. So Matt, here on the show, a lot of our audience that tunes in every week deals in rare earths or tightly related critical minerals. All the metals you just said — copper, gold, silver, palladium — are not neodymium, they're not dysprosium. So what is this urban mining that you're doing, and how does that play into rare earths and the economics around that?
Matt Bedingfield (04:56)
Rare earths aren't in all the e-waste streams. They are in some very specific rare earth streams. And if I think about e-waste, the traditional method of recycling or refining these has been pyrometallurgical smelters. In general, they're not able to recover the rare earths — the rare earths end up in the slag. So they haven't been payable items, and rare earths haven't been that much in demand or as in vogue as they are now, up until recently. So it traditionally hasn't been built into it. What you've got now, though, is a much more diverse stream of e-waste coming in. You've got all these haptics and things of that nature. You've got hard drives, which have magnets in them. So your rare earths are becoming more and more relevant in the stream. The nature of our process is that we don't recover rare earths right now, but we are able to concentrate them and give them to some of the companies that you see getting funded now to recover those rare earths, be it via chromatography or some other technology.
Dustin Olsen (06:01)
Makes sense. As you just said, rare earths have become popular in the last couple of years, more so than they have been. Is that on your horizon — to also be able to recover rare earths from some of these products, whatever they may be?
Matt Bedingfield (06:24)
Yeah, our goal would be to recover everything of value that we can. And I know that's definitely of strategic importance to the OEMs that are consuming them. Because when I say it's just become popular over the last couple of years, I don't mean it's become important over the last couple of years. It has been important — the US just hasn't built that critical infrastructure to refine it here. So some of the OEMs that we're talking to are very interested in it. This is actually pointing towards one of the changes I think is going to have to happen in recycling. It's such a complex space that I think the ecosystem coming together is extremely important here. What may be a byproduct coming off of my process — that concentrated rare earth stream, or magnets, or things that we sort out on the front end — may be an input to a rare earth specialist who's going to refine that material to bring it back into the supply chain. So our ability to work together and team up our specialties, and to create this full supply chain to keep these metals and materials here, I think is going to be critical going forward.
Dustin Olsen (07:28)
I also think it's pretty critical. Here on the show, since we've been doing it, we've talked a lot about the need for recycling. The reality is there's only so much we can pull out of the ground — so much geological, geopolitical, you name it, hurdles that make this even harder. And so being able to recycle the products that we use every day makes a lot of sense. With that framing: recycling, from the numbers that we've seen and as we've talked to other people who also deal in this space, the contribution back into the supply chain isn't a lot. At one point we were hearing two percent back into the supply chain. What are your estimates from your perspective? How much is going to go back into the supply chain with your process and the feedstock that you're pulling through?
Matt Bedingfield (08:33)
I've seen estimates as high as ten to twenty percent on how much of critical mineral demand is satisfied by recycling. And I've also heard people say we're not going to recycle our way out of this. I fully agree with them. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. If the e-waste stream is fifty to a hundred times as concentrated as mined ore right now — and keep in mind, this is not a depleting asset, this is a perpetual asset. Every single time that we recycle e-waste, it's then backfed by a data center refresh or a new iPhone announcement, like the one that's coming out, I think, next week. So a lot of assets are going to come back into this. The mine constantly replenishes itself. So while we can't recycle our way out of it, it doesn't make it any less important to do it. I've said this is a large enough problem to be an AND problem, not an OR problem. We need recycling, we need mines, we need smelters, we need all the new technologies that are coming out to recover rare earths. All of these things need to be in place to handle the diversity that's coming back through recycling.
Dustin Olsen (09:44)
Well said. I couldn't agree more. We can't recycle our way out of it. But I get the impression from the industry that recycling is really hard, for probably more reasons than one. Do you have any insights you'd like to share as to why recycling consumer waste, or any sort of e-waste, is just really difficult?
Matt Bedingfield (10:19)
Yeah — it makes me smile to hear you say that, because I think people who are farther away from it think it's a pretty simple thing. On the front end, you've got consumer behavior, which is almost impossible to impact. There's the education piece. If I go to some of the simpler streams that need to be recycled, like aluminum cans, in the US we're only at a fifty percent recycle rate right now on that. And that's a pretty simple one to understand — the economics are there. Plastics are very difficult to educate people on — the different grades, which bin you put them in, how you recycle them. So that's a very high bar. Those are nothing compared to e-waste. We have our sensitive data on them. You're not quite certain where to take it, how to make sure that data is protected, what's recyclable and what's not. Is a vacuum cleaner e-waste? A cell phone is. So there's a big definition problem and an education problem. And that's just on the front end. When you get to the middle of it, when you get to the processing and refining — recycling as a generalization is fine, but the reason it's so hard is because it's so complex. Every one of those materials I just outlined — aluminum, plastic, e-waste — they all have totally separate supply chains, totally separate technologies and processes they have to go through. So you can't lump them into one. And this is one of the issues that I find when we're trying to raise money to actually put this infrastructure in place. Because you'll find that one stream is having problems with profitability, but it's still recycling. It might be plastic recycling, it might be battery recycling, but all that sticks is recycling. So when I go to raise money for e-waste, or someone goes to raise money for rare earths, the stigma or the scar tissue from that investment carries over into the other one. So that diversity and complexity hurts us there as well.
Dustin Olsen (12:15)
There are so many complexities, and I think to your point, education for the general public is extremely lacking. So for us to effectively move forward and really maximize the opportunity and give a company like yours feedstock — are you participating in the efforts to educate the general public, or do you rely on partners like HP to create recycling programs where people can drop off whatever they want to get rid of?
Matt Bedingfield (12:56)
Right now with Mint, we're raising to build in the US, so I'm more focused on investors at the moment. However, I did spend five years on the board of The Recycling Partnership, which was solely focused on consumer education and municipality education. They were more focused on plastic and aluminum at the time, but they've got major backers and funding from OEMs to major brands to metals companies to plastics companies. And they actually go into municipalities and try to educate consumers on this goes here, this goes there, don't put that there. They're the ones who have put the grants together. The little bins that you carry out that get filled up on the day after your recycling gets picked up — they're the ones who convert those to big carts so that it can hopefully last the whole week. Because we all know, once those bins get filled up, everything goes in the trash can, because you can't just have a pile of things. So they're trying to impact it at that level — teaching the MRFs that actually recycle in these municipalities how to make money, how to make sure they're getting all the valuables out of the single streams that are coming into them. So that work is getting done. I'm definitely interested in extending that out to e-waste, because I think there's a massive amount to learn. And there's a massive amount of trust that needs to be built. I mean, I'm in the industry, and if I go into my kitchen and look at that drawer that we all have there that's just filled up with random things, there's a couple of cell phones in there. There are chargers in there that I need to go and find the place to recycle. And I'm in the industry.
Dustin Olsen (14:32)
Yeah. If you're having trouble knowing where to put that, I can't imagine everyone else. Even for myself, I'm thinking — if I'm not trading in my phone to a phone carrier or a manufacturer in exchange for money, I would have no idea where to recycle anything. So let's shift gears a little bit. You quickly talked about the infrastructure you're trying to build. What does that look like from the rare earth perspective? These facilities can be quite huge — all the different stages that everything has to go through, the room everything needs. These are no small operations by any means. So what does yours look like?
Matt Bedingfield (15:33)
Yeah. Our founder, Will Barker, I think gives the best description I've heard for people to be able to visualize: it looks like a microbrewery on steroids. It's tanks, vats, pumps. On the front end there's typical recycling equipment like shredders and sorters and things of that nature, so that we can concentrate materials and get the most out of our chemistry once it gets there — removing things like resins, aluminum, iron, things of that nature. But when you get in, it's tanks, vats and pumps. We need roughly 100,000 square feet of warehouse space, and we can drop into existing infrastructure. That's a big win for us, because we're able to build in a modular way. Our chemistry capacity is around four thousand tons per year, and based on the concentration factors on the front end, that can mean eight to ten thousand tons per year of printed circuit board feedstock. So we can see building multiples of these in the country, in the region where they are, to try to take some of the logistics that are currently on printed circuit boards out of the equation. Just keep in mind, all of these printed circuit boards get collected here by the 900 or so e-waste recyclers that exist in country. They get broken down to commodities, and then ultimately they all get exported, because we do not have the capabilities in country. So they get exported, shipped overseas, and then ultimately we hope they come back. That's a lot of time on the road and on the water.
Dustin Olsen (17:03)
That is. And we've had some guests on the show talk about that same thing — just the lack of capability, and things get shipped out of the country and back into the country, hopefully. But it's almost like we're paying again to get the product we already had. So with the infrastructure you're building out, is there anything you're trying to do to keep things in house?
Matt Bedingfield (17:39)
Well, if by in house you mean in country, absolutely. We're bridging that refining gap. We've got the processing here — it's the refining we don't have. We've had a couple of smelters. We've had one built down in southeast Georgia that's up and running. Korea Zinc just announced another one coming up in Tennessee in the next few years. It's still not enough. All of our ability to handle difficult-to-process scrap left the country some twenty-five odd years ago. So we have to build that back. The reshoring efforts that we're making here are great — the data center piece, the growth that we've got there, the energy transition, the EV automotive revolution that is coming. It's a question of when, not if, in my opinion. All of that stuff is going to be funded by our ability to keep these metals on shore. If we don't do that, and we don't shore up the front end of the supply chain, we've done nothing from a supply chain vulnerability standpoint — which is the whole point of this effort. So that's why I say it's an AND problem. It's us doing what we can to keep copper, gold, silver, tin and palladium here in country and feed it back into the supply chain. It's smelters doing the same thing. It's identifying those gaps and filling in the blanks over the next five to ten years, so that we can have a robust sovereign supply chain.
Dustin Olsen (19:01)
And I agree wholeheartedly. Do you think we're trending in the right direction? Are we making the strides that need to be made to keep things in country, or do we still have a tremendous long way to go because people are putting their time, focus and money elsewhere?
Matt Bedingfield (19:29)
I think the answer to both of those is yes. So we have a tremendous way to go. That's not saying that we're not paying attention to it now. If you look to the last three administrations — Trump one, Biden, and now Trump two — the one consistency we've seen is the focus on this reshoring, on critical minerals, on bringing the capabilities back to the United States. If you go to Washington, or you read anything about what's coming out of Washington, it seems the one thing we can agree on is the projects that are coming out of there to support this infrastructure. It's a lot of rare earths talk. We're talking about copper. We're starting to understand that without these materials, we can't make our products. So I think that attention's there. The money is coming out, the policy is coming out. Just a few weeks ago, they announced a ban on black mass and tungsten scrap exports. I think the challenge with that comes — the trade policies are helpful, but only if we have the capability in country to deal with it. So how do we make these policies match up with getting the private capital into these markets, so we can build the infrastructure and then help stand these companies up as they go? It's going to be on e-waste, it's going to be on battery recycling, black mass, it's going to be on rare earths, even copper — most difficult-to-process copper gets exported now too. And there's an existing shortage already. So it is a big problem. You're not going to have one government grant swoop in and fix it. It's going to have to take multiple, multiple administrations to keep the focus, to keep us driving towards that. And we cannot have the policy whiplash that we've seen in the past if we're going to have success in this space.
Dustin Olsen (21:21)
I love what you just said — that it's going to take multiple administrations to pull this off. And I agree. I think it took multiple administrations to get us to the situation we're in, and it's going to take multiple to get us out. I hope that as a country we can recognize the need for that and hold our elected officials accountable for that need. So hopefully those who are listening can help disseminate this message out there. At least here in the United States, our political system runs in four-year sprints, essentially. And it's anyone's guess after that what will change or be done away with, simply because there's no alignment on vision.
Matt Bedingfield (22:23)
One of the things, Dustin, I've seen in this space that I think makes it different than a lot of spaces — I think recycling in the past has been associated with some kind of altruism, the right thing to do. And don't get me wrong, it is. One of my favorite things to say has always been: metals recycling is where the right thing meets the profitable thing. When those two things align, you can attract money. It's actually sustainable. Nothing is sustainable if it's not profitable. Eventually the subsidies will run out. This space is actually sustainable. So when I talk — if there is a blue party in the White House, I can talk about the sustainability, the job creation, the efficiency of what we're doing, greenhouse gas emissions, all of those things. When it's a different party, I can talk national security, critical minerals, supply for our domestic manufacturing infrastructure. And none of that's disingenuous. It is absolutely true. And it checks every box for either party. I think that's a real advantage that we have in this space. We just have to make sure we continue framing it the right way, so we keep that consistency as we build this out.
Dustin Olsen (23:36)
Matt, well said. I hope that all the business executives listening to this can help contribute to that messaging, especially here in the United States, so that we can get that administration-over-administration churn to maintain the momentum that we need to see the progress that we need — not only as a country, but truly as a global community. Well said. So let's digress just a little bit. What does your background look like? What were you doing before you started working with Mint Innovation? What led you here to be so passionate about recycling and recovering the material that we already have?
Matt Bedingfield (24:37)
Yeah. I've been in metals and recycling for the last seventeen years or so. This is my first foray into a startup, so kind of the first time without a safety net under me. But I've gotten to grow up in large corporates who have all been pushing the envelope. I started my metals journey with Novelis. Their tagline was disruption by design, and I very much fit into that mold. So I got to start out in strategy, sort of drinking from the fire hose. We had a CEO at the time who saw the recycling writing on the wall. So I got to participate in helping set their recycling strategy, and then got dropped into it. And they took a guy from Alabama who'd used his passport once and put me all over the world to build assets all around the world, move scrap around the world. It was a fantastic opportunity. It sort of got me into it. After that was with Tri-Arrows, managing the customer side of this as their chief commercial officer. So we got to see what the brands were needing from a recycling content perspective, from a story perspective, from a responsible supply chain perspective — understanding that piece. Then I went to Wieland and built a recycling business from scratch. I was executive number one in it, built out the full team. We built out a hundred-million-plus secondary copper refinery in Kentucky, so that's up and running. We acquired a big company that's a recycler in St. Louis. They handled about 50 million pounds of e-waste a year. So that's what opened me up to e-waste — and understanding that we don't have any capability to refine it in country. That led me down the path of trying to solve that. We were successful in being awarded a $270 million grant under the Biden administration to build a fully integrated copper smelter in the United States. Ultimately that ended up not coming to fruition, for one reason or another. But that's what sort of lit my fire for this issue. And then I was introduced to Will Barker, who founded Mint. While the one I tried to build before was a pyromet solution, Will's innovation in hydrometallurgy and using our biosorption process enabled hydrometallurgy here. The important part of that is, instead of taking seven years to build with a billion dollars and all kinds of permitting hurdles to jump over, we build in fifteen months for around forty-five million, and everything's at ambient temperature. So the permitting is a far lower hurdle from what we have to do. This is just a different way of me going at the same problem. And it all comes back to setting up the sovereign supply chain, rebuilding the front end of it so that we can supply all these manufacturing companies that are coming back.
Dustin Olsen (27:25)
That sounds really awesome. It feels like everything you've done has definitely built upon itself, giving you a great experience to be here today. So with that in mind — this is the first time you've been a part of a startup, at Mint. What are the things that keep you up at night?
Matt Bedingfield (27:51)
I mean, everything, and different things every day. I'm a person who has a very low aversion to risk. I can handle it, it doesn't bother me, I'm good with uncertainty. That being said, startups will push you to the limit. There are days where I've had my fill of it. There are days where it's absolutely invigorating. So I truly love it. It is an emotional roller coaster. There are days where you think you're changing the world, and days where you've got imposter syndrome like you wouldn't believe. But we have a great technology. We have a great team. I've got a team in Auckland, I've got a team in Sydney, and then I've started building out the team here in the US. We've got incredibly smart minds behind what we're doing. The thematic is sticking in the US. If you're going to sign up for this, for the startup world, be ready to wear different hats every single day. Be ready to feel like you're taking one step forward and two steps back. And just be ready to lean into it and keep pushing forward.
Dustin Olsen (29:03)
Yes, and we could probably have a whole master class on just that alone. It is not for the faint of heart when it comes to the startup world, and kudos to you for sticking with it. I think a lot of good will come from it. So really quick, let's talk about the size of the team, the company. You're in New Zealand, you're in Australia, you're building out here in the US. What does the landscape look like for Mint Innovation?
Matt Bedingfield (29:40)
Our headquarters is in Auckland. We were founded about ten years ago by Will Barker. He's still with us. I became CEO about three months ago, but Will is still there — he's executive director and strategic advisor to me. I probably talk to him more now than I did when he was CEO. So the two of us sort of divide and conquer. We've got about fifty people spread between those three sites. The team in the US is smaller, but I am engaged in a raise right now to begin our build-out in the US. We have our first site in Longview, Texas, and we're ready to go on that as soon as I'm able to close the round that we're in. We have a first-of-a-kind plant down in Sydney that was a commercial prototype. We're making some upgrades to that right now to bring it to full commercial scale, with some of the improvements that we've been making around off-the-shelf manufacturing processes, to strengthen your ability to homogenize your feedstock on the front end. So all of that is happening right now. And then we've got a great base team of scientists and engineers and leaders down in Auckland as well. Auckland is a phenomenal environment for incubating green tech, clean tech, all of these things that we need longer term to come into the market. Auckland sees the need for it, and they've got a great business environment for that.
Dustin Olsen (31:05)
Very cool. And how long have you guys been in business?
Matt Bedingfield (31:11)
It was founded roughly ten years ago. I've been here for about a year and a half. So I'm still learning — drinking from the fire hose.
Dustin Olsen (31:20)
And speaking of drinking from the fire hose — if someone's coming out of college or their graduate program, is there any advice you would give them? They're interested in this space, but they probably don't know where to go, or where to maybe emphasize their studies. What would you tell them?
Matt Bedingfield (31:44)
Well, first and foremost: do not write off manufacturing. I love going and talking to students about that. I always joke that nobody ever grows up saying, Man, I can't wait to work in manufacturing. It's just not as cool as a doctor or a lawyer. But I will tell you this — it's made me a world citizen. I've been extremely lucky and blessed to be in the position that I'm in, and I just stumbled into manufacturing by accident. But I'm very lucky to be here. So look deep at that. The opportunities are endless. Your opportunity to become a global citizen — I think manufacturing is one of the few areas left that can provide that to you. And that perspective is just invaluable. For engineers and people of that nature looking at recycling specifically: make sure you're a problem solver. Because what's fascinating on the processing side of things is, we're solving the problems that we see today. The feedstock is constantly evolving. As we are bettering the digital toys that we all have in our life, as we're bettering the compute that's coming out in data centers, the feedstock is constantly evolving — which means the processing capability and the process that it goes through is constantly going to change. So you'll fix it today, it'll be perfect, and then tomorrow it's not right again. For some people that is tiring. Maybe look to something that's a little bit more mature or a little more stable. But for the people who get excited about that and want to continue solving those problems, you couldn't find a better space.
Dustin Olsen (33:18)
Very exciting, especially in the era that we live in. I know today, this year, there's a lot of talk about AI taking jobs, and so I think this is encouraging — that there's still plenty of jobs and problems to solve with a human mind. So that's great. And so, one last question, Matt, to wrap up our time here together. We've kind of touched on it a little bit, but if there's one thing that you could share to pull this all together: what do people get wrong about the economics of recycling and that end of the supply chain? What do you want them to know?
Matt Bedingfield (34:08)
Yeah, I think it goes back to what I was saying earlier. We think of recycling as far as our duty to recycle. I think we need to focus on the value of recycling. Profit is not the cost of sustainability — it actually enables sustainability. So when we start looking at the streams that are going out, focus on the value that's going out. I mentioned earlier that e-waste is fifty to a hundred times as concentrated as mined ore. The ability to recycle that mine that we already have in country, that's already out of the ground, is far less costly than setting up a new mine. It's far quicker than setting up a new mine. And it's far richer than the things that will come out of that new mine. Yet for some reason we still view it as a waste stream. We have to switch that way of thinking if we're going to solve this problem. So that's where I would point people — we just need to shift our perspective in how we view it.
Dustin Olsen (35:11)
Well said. For those that want to be a part of what Mint's doing, in any capacity, where should we send them?
Matt Bedingfield (35:23)
You can go to our webpage at mint.bio. You can reach out to me on LinkedIn — I'm quite active there. We're pretty easy to find in that way.
Dustin Olsen (35:35)
Perfect. We will definitely include links in our show notes to both of those places, so that people can connect with you and be a part of the innovation that's going on over at Mint. So Matt, thank you for being here on the show with us and sharing your perspective, your insights, and of course the great work that you're doing at Mint to change the world for the better.
Matt Bedingfield (36:02)
Thank you for having me.
