Elemental approach

Elemental Holding S.A., headquartered in the province of Mazovia in Poland, acquired U.S.-based catalytic converter processors Maryland Core Inc. of Baltimore and Legend Smelting and Recycling (LSR), Hebron, Ohio, in 2021. But those investments were not its first in the U.S. In late 2019, Elemental Holding acquired a controlling stake in PGM of Texas, which has a large purchasing network with 12 locations across the United States, as well as a processing plant and a chemical laboratory.

Photo courtesy of
Elemental Holding

Krzysztof Spyra, vice president of Elemental Holding, says, “Wherever we are present, our aim is to make sure that we process and produce recycled metals in [a] way that is fully sustainable, based on state-of-the-art technologies and best ESG (environmental, social and governance) practices.”

He says the privately owned company has been active in the urban mining industry for more than a decade. “During that time, we have grown from a local European recycler to one of the largest and most technologically advanced green metals producers in the world. We have achieved this through both organic growth and acquisitions, with the initial focus on Europe and Asia—from Germany, Spain and the U.K. to Singapore and India.”

To continue its growth, Elemental Holding is targeting new markets and new regions.

Gaining a global position

Spyra says Elemental Holding seeks a global leadership position in sourcing and producing strategic metals in an environmentally sound fashion. That includes the platinum group metals (PGMs, platinum, palladium and rhodium) found in catalytic converters and copper group metals, which include silver and gold. (Copper group metals are the Group 11 elements on the periodic table known for their high ductility and electrical and thermal conductivity.)

“Achieving this aim would clearly be impossible without a strong footprint in the American PGM market,” he says. “While having a closer look in the U.S., we therefore searched for businesses that would fit this strategy.”

Maryland Core is a buyer and recycler of catalytic converters, used auto parts and other automotive scrap. Elemental Holding purchased the company for $11 million in a transaction that was done with the cooperation of the Polish International Development Fund, managed by Warsaw, Poland-based PFR TFI, and the Polish Development Bank.

LSR has been in business for 40 years and has locations in Ohio, California, Illinois, Indiana and Texas. The company sources catalytic converters and nonferrous scrap, including lead-acid batteries, copper wire, radiators, starters and transmissions, from across North America, including Mexico. LSR had sales of nearly $250 million in 2020, according to Elemental Holding. The company can grade, cut, mill and assay converter material under a single roof.

Elemental Holding says that with its purchase of LSR, the company’s investments in the U.S. market have reached approximately $100 million.

“We were lucky to find and invest in companies with well-established reputations and strong positions in the local markets for sourcing materials and further production of metals,” Spyra says of the company’s U.S. purchases in this sector.

When asked if Elemental Holding will rebrand the U.S. companies it has acquired, he says, “We appreciate the reputation that was gained by PGM of Texas, Maryland Core and LSR over the years. We see it as a huge asset and an effect of the hard work by generations of team members. We obviously want Elemental’s brand awareness to be increased in the U.S., but at the moment we are yet to decide what this process will look like in details.”

Through organic growth and these U.S. acquisitions, as well as its acquisitions in Europe and Asia, Elemental Holding has increased its PGM production volume from 42,000 troy ounces (1.25 tons) per year in 2016 to more than 600,000 troy ounces (20.6 tons) per year in 2021.

The company’s global PGM operations include Recat GmbH of Germany, Kat-Metal of Finland, PGMG Recycling and Platinum MM of Poland and Elemental Resource Management in the United Kingdom.

Positioning for further growth

Elemental Holding considers its newly acquired U.S. assets as platforms for further growth in the urban mining industry. “PGM is just one of many segments we focus on as a group, and we see a number of opportunities to further position our companies in the U.S. market, for instance in the EV (electric vehicle) batteries sector. With the unique know-how we have gained in Europe and Asia, as well as [our] considerable financial potential and access to global clients, we also want our companies to keep investing in the development of best technologies and enrich their value chain with downstream solutions in metals production.”

Elemental Holding’s companies focus on recovering metals from electronics, printed circuit boards, catalytic converters and nonferrous scrap. “Each of these four segments has its own specifics and often depends on local regulatory environments and supply chains,” Spyra says. “As the group, we therefore leave our subsidiaries with independent positions while making sure we use synergies when it comes to acquisition processes, sales networks and investment policies.”

Its other companies include precious metal trading firm Elemental Recycling Middle East DMCC in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; integrated circuits, printed circuit boards and electronics recycler Tesla Recycling of Poland; electronics recycling firm Terra Recycling of Poland; EMP Recycling of Lithuania, which specializes in recycling catalysts, electronics and refrigerators; nonferrous metal recycler Syntom Metal Recycling of Poland; and PCB Tech Recycling of Poland, which focuses on recycling printed circuit boards.

While Spyra says Elemental Holding is open to additional investment opportunities that could present themselves in the U.S., the company is focused on growing its presence in Asia, entering the South American market and expanding the materials it processes.

“We are building Europe’s first comprehensive facility to process spent EV batteries,” Spyra says. “Its launch is planned in 2023. It will deploy dedicated technology that will allow us to recover and refine nickel, cobalt, lithium as well as other metals and raw materials which are essential for the lithium-ion battery value chain and the entire e-mobility industry.”

The company’s new facility will be constructed in Zawiercie in southern Poland.

At the time of the announcement in mid-November of last year, Michal Zygmunt, a vice president at Elemental Holding, said, “We have reached another milestone in what is one of Europe’s most ambitious commercial projects aimed at reducing emissions as well as providing support for the development of e-mobility and circular economy across the continent. The recycling and reuse of metals from car batteries will lead to carbon savings of as much as 98 percent compared with their primary counterparts. It is therefore seen as a critical part of the transition to a low-carbon economy.”

The project is being co-financed by the Polish National Centre for Research and Development with the support of the European Commission.

The plant will be approximately 5.4 million square feet, a spokesman for Elemental Holding says, though he is unable to disclose the facility’s target capacity because the technologies to be used at the site are still being developed.

Poland is the European Union’s largest EV battery manufacturer, according to a February 2021 article from Politico. In 2020, the value of lithium-ion battery exports from the country totaled roughly 400 million euros (more than $450 million) per month. These batteries make up nearly 2 percent of all Poland’s exports and fulfill one-third of electric vehicle battery demand in Europe.

“We see the global rise in the electric vehicles market, as well as hydrogen and fuel cell vehicles, as a huge opportunity that will keep driving our business forward over the next decades,” Spyra says. “The reason for that is that we look at the industry from the perspective of [a] metals producer rather than [a] waste metals recycler. With the growth of the new mobility sectors, the demand for the metals we produce, including PGMs, will be steadily growing in the years to come.”

He adds that the new mobility sectors are much more precious metals-intensive than internal combustion vehicles. “At the same time, traditional metals mining leads to increased greenhouse gas emissions, as well as to major cause of biodiversity loss and human rights violations in the global south,” Spyra says. “The market is also increasingly aware of that and will be shifting its focus away from mining metals towards recycling what has already been used.”

As part of their ESG strategies, a growing number of companies that have strong consumer brands are offering premiums to metals producers that are marketing recycled-content products, he says. Additionally, the global automotive industry recognizes the need to increase recycling of critical metals to meet growing technological and environmental challenges. “That is why we are entering the EV batteries recycling sector, which is the field we want to gain global leadership in,” Spyra says.

The author is editor of Recycling Today and can be contacted at dtoto@gie.net.