Metycle trading website raises $5 million

Metycle, a recently created online platform for buying and selling nonferrous scrap and secondary commodities, has raised $5 million after closing a seed funding round.

The Germany-based company, founded by Rafael Suchan and Sebastian Brenner, says the funds combined with those raised earlier this year, will help it digitalize the path to more reliable global metal recycling.

“Metal recycles forever without quality loss,” says Suchan, a former executive with China-based Chiho Tiande and its German business unit Scholz Group. “It’s a key reusable commodity for infrastructure and investment goods production and the key material for the green energy transition towards a carbon neutral world.”

Suchan will be based in Beijing and Brenner in Germany, positioning the business-to-business online marketplace “an unmatched international setup.”

“With Metycle, we aim to be the world’s most efficient and trusted marketplace for secondary metals," Brenner says.

Metycle says it is preparing to tap into a more than $600 billion global market for scrap metal and recycled-content metals. The company will use the new capital “to accelerate go-to-market, expand into new geographies and develop technology and artificial intelligence-based enhanced quality control measures critical to the secondary metals industry.”

Investors involved in the Project A funding round include: California-based Partech; Poland-based Market One Capital; the Dutch Founders Fund (DFF), Amsterdam; Anne-Marie Großmann and GMH Group of Germany; Gisbert Rühl, former CEO of Germany-based Klöckner & Co.; Christoph Cordes of Germany-based Flink); and Philipp Andernach of Antunnacum, also based in Germany.

“We are incredibly excited to support the team behind Metycle, as they possess the industry experience that we deem crucial for unlocking this immense opportunity within the metal recycling industry,” says Philipp Werner, a partner at Project A.

Metycle says its platform allows buyers and sellers to trade any metals and mixed metals, from steel to aluminum to copper and other nonferrous metals. “Metycle digitizes the path to more recycling, helping to collect and reuse materials, reducing the need to mine primary raw material,” the company says.

Metycle sources material from throughout Europe and is expanding to source from North America. For scrap buyers, the company says its marketplace provides access to the highest quality material, payment options and terms. It also conducts quality control and takes care of the shipping process, which the parties can track live.

Additionally, Metycle has entered a partnership with Berlin-based Finmid to support its trade financing. “By combining Finmid technology with Metycle ambition to digitize the metal recycling industry, together we are improving transparency and trust in trade within the industry globally,” says Max Schertel, co-founder of Finmid.