Zincovery founder Jonathan Ring on his mission to decarbonise Earth's dirtiest metal recycling industry

The fourth most used metal in the world, behind iron, aluminium, copper, and zinc, is a $40 billion dollar global industry with one fundamental problem.  

It is the only major industrial metal that has a higher carbon footprint when recycled than when mined.

Enter Zincovery with a simple but ambitious mission: decarbonising zinc recycling.  

Zinc is mainly used to coat steel. Every year, the steel recycling industry generates dust containing $10B USD worth of zinc. Only half of this dust is recycled. 

“The problem is that right now, the incumbent technologies can only recycle the zinc dust using coal-based methods,” Zincovery founder Jonathan Ring told Caffeine.

“So essentially blending the dust with coal, reacting the coal and the metal oxides to form CO2 and boiling the zinc out of the dust.”    

Ring explains that this expense and pollution make the dust made by the steel mills essentially worthless, leaving them with thousands of tonnes that nevertheless must be recycled in much of the world due to legislation. 

Zinc is one of the few completely recyclable metals, meaning it can be recovered and reused without a loss in quality. According to the World Economic Forum, 30% of all worldwide zinc originates from recycled or secondary zinc.

Zincovery’s technique, which uses a combination of hydro, acid, and electroextraction, eliminates the need for fossil fuels and cuts emissions by 95%. 

The pitch has been attractive enough to investors for the company to reach over $9m in the first close last week, with movement on the second close underway. 

“We did the first close at the end of last week, and the money for that has come through. We’re now essentially just trying to get the second close,” said Ring. 

“We’re hopeful that within a month or two, we’ll have it completely closed out and we’ll add a few more million to our total raise. And then from there, we will build a demonstration plant.”

Pending the success of the demonstration, Zincovery will look to its first commercial plant and Ring points to North America as the most promising launch pad. 

While businesses so heavily dependent on the economics of a single commodity can often be vulnerable to price fluctuation, Ring says he’s confident in zinc’s stability. 

“If we were to model out what our break-even price would be, it would be $500 US dollars per ton of zinc, which is a price that has not been observed in zinc since the seventies and I don’t believe will ever be observed again.”

His confidence is likely buoyed by the critical role zinc plays in green technologies. Zinc is essential for advanced batteries and zinc coatings protect solar panels and wind turbines. A 10MWh offshore wind turbine requires 4 tonnes of zinc. 

Ring believes Zincovery's relentless focus on hard numbers gives them an edge. 

“I think it’s something that our company does really well and I can’t exactly say where it comes from, but it’s a value that we hold very dearly,” he said.  

“I know plenty of engineers and engineering startups that don’t look at the big picture, that don’t look at the unit economics and the opportunity around what innovations they’re trying to use.”

While zinc is the company’s current focus, the founder says his technology may be adapted to the recycling of other metals, particularly nickel and copper.  

“We don’t have proof of that yet but it’s something I want to spend a small amount of resources over the next couple of years developing to get proof of concept.”

While both the zinc market and Zincovery's futures seem bright, the company has still had its share of struggles.

Zincovery abandoned an early iteration of its technology after a market study found it wouldn’t scale.    

Ring says keeping his eyes on the future is what got him through those moments. 

“What got me through the tough times, particularly when we did a pivot early on in the business, was doing it for more than myself. I got into this business in large part because it had the potential to have an outsized, positive impact on the world. “

As for his advice to other founders, outside of checking your maths and doing the hard work, Ring says to ask why you started your business in the first place. 

“In the hardest times, when I was really not enjoying working within the company, there was still something that kind of allowed me to dig deep and carry on. That was being on a mission that was bigger than myself and just my enjoyment at that one period of time.”