Originally published in The Wall Street Journal by Rhiannon Hoyle. Read the full article here.
Orivium, a startup that aims to extract copper from mining waste and hard-to-process ores, is looking to raise $20 million to develop technology it thinks can unlock valuable critical minerals and lessen U.S. reliance on foreign-made metal.
The company says it can separate metals from waste and ore without the massive amounts of energy and chemicals used in traditional smelting and refining methods. Chief Executive Bill Amelio—formerly CEO of Chinese computer giant Lenovo and electronic components distributor Avnet—likens the process to fracking, only greener.
Melbourne, Australia-based Orivium joins a wave of companies trying different ways of solving a problem that’s been nagging at the Trump administration: America’s reliance on others, especially China, for metals essential to manufacturing and defense.
“Our Country, quite simply, needs Copper—AND NOW!” President Trump said in a social-media post last year as he voiced support for a mining project in Arizona.
Over decades, China built a dominant role in metals processing, work that traditionally requires large amounts of energy and chemicals, and generates significant waste and emissions. Now policymakers are concerned about how dependent the U.S. has become on foreign suppliers, particularly after a rise in geopolitical tensions.
“What the United States did over the last 30 years, outsourcing a bunch of stuff to China—big mistake,” said Amelio, who joined Orivium last year to spearhead its U.S.-focused growth plans. “It’s now created a strategic problem for the country that we’re trying to undo as we speak.”
Orivium isn’t alone in seeing an opportunity to turn previously passed-over resources into prized assets.
Vancouver, British Columbia-based pH7 Technologies, a startup seeking to commercialize its own electrochemical extraction process, last week announced the close of an oversubscribed $39 million Series B round.
Another company called Valor, launched by the former head of Glencore’s recycling business and two University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign scientists, has received backing from past executives of Anglo American, Glencore and Tesla, among others.
Orivium also faces competition from some deeper-pocketed rivals seeking to use microbes to strip copper from ores that are otherwise uneconomical to mine. One of those, Nuton, is owned by Rio Tinto, the world’s second-biggest mining company by market value.
Orivium founders Emma Clark and David Coleman.
Orivium founder and Executive Chair Emma Clark, a 20-year veteran of Exxon Mobil before launching Orivium in 2022 with David Coleman, said the company is seeking to raise equity from strategic investors, including companies and funds that are exposed to the mining industry or technology-related companies. It is also exploring funding from family offices and high-net-worth individuals, she said.
Clark acknowledges Orivium is years behind some rivals in building its visibility in global markets. “That is our number-one downside and that is the number-one reason why we are trying to raise capital to get out there as quick as we can,” she said.
The company expects to begin generating revenue this year and is considering an initial public offering within three years, said Clark.
Orivium’s technology centers on what it calls its “super oxidizer,” an electrochemical system that can free copper from sulfide ores that are notoriously tricky to process, and from waste known as tailings or slag, said Clark.
Traditionally, miners leach copper from piles of crushed ore by soaking it in sulfuric acid, dissolving the copper into solution. Orivium instead applies a mild electrical current to common reagents that allow it to dissolve and extract the metal at faster rates, Clark said.
The reagents are recyclable, water is reused and the process, which can be powered by solar or wind, produces hydrogen as another product, she added. Using the technology on waste can also help clean up environmental hazards from old mines, while potentially reducing how many new pits are needed, said Clark.
“This is the most interesting thing I’ve seen in a long time,” Texas-based Amelio said. “It’s going to do to mining what fracking has done for oil and gas.”
With fracking, American shale drillers helped turn the U.S. into the world’s top oil producer by taking a new approach to tap deposits that were previously beyond the reach of profitable drilling.
Orivium’s priority is to show its technology can unlock domestic sources of copper, vital for electric vehicles, power grids and data centers. The company also has had discussions with U.S. government officials about using its approach to extract rare earths and uranium and to recycle electronic waste, Clark said.
In November, Orivium agreed to a deal with Infinity Mining to test its technology on old mining waste from the company’s Cangai copper project in Australia’s New South Wales state. It expects to have a plant—its first—in operation by the end of this year.
Orivium wants to build a $3 million lab in the U.S. for further development work and is looking at sites, potentially in Colorado.
The company’s focus is on developing partnerships with junior mining companies in the Americas, where it sees potential in mine waste and sulfide ores. It also hopes to benefit from policy tailwinds as the Trump administration seeks to revive U.S. mineral supply chains.
“I think that we’re in the right place at the right time,” Amelio said.
Write to Rhiannon Hoyle at rhiannon.hoyle@wsj.com
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