Latest / Lab to Market Leadership with Chris Reichhelm / Critical Minerals, E-Waste, and the Race to Build Domestic Supply Chains with Matt Bedingfield

Transcript

Critical Minerals, E-Waste, and the Race to Build Domestic Supply Chains with Matt Bedingfield · Lab to Market Leadership with Chris Reichhelm

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Electronic vehicles take four times as much copper as internal combustion.
0:05
SPEAKER_00: Data centers, good lord, the amount of demand that they're generating for all of these materials.
0:10
SPEAKER_00: Electronic waste is about 50 to 100 times more concentrated in precious metals and copper than ore is.
0:18
SPEAKER_00: Yet we view it as a waste stream.
0:20
SPEAKER_00: It's an urban mine.
0:21
SPEAKER_00: The day you start digging is the day that plant isn't worth anything.
0:25
SPEAKER_00: So you need to be flexible and nimble and ready to move and build a pivot when you need to.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: I've always said that recycling metals is where the right thing meets the profitable thing.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: And that is a perfect storm.
0:40
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Lab to Market Leadership Podcast.
0:43
SPEAKER_01: Too many advanced science and engineering companies fail to deliver their innovations from the lab to the market.
0:50
SPEAKER_01: We are on a mission to change that.
0:52
SPEAKER_01: My name is Chris Reichhelm, and I'm the founder and CEO of Deep Tech Leaders.
0:57
SPEAKER_01: Each week we speak with some of the world's leading entrepreneurs, investors, corporates, and policymakers about what it takes to succeed on the lab to market journey.
1:07
SPEAKER_01: Join us.
1:14
SPEAKER_01: Let me set some context first.
1:16
SPEAKER_01: Deep tech, as we know, is a broad church.
1:19
SPEAKER_01: We've got innovation happening in compute, industrials, health, and medical.
1:25
SPEAKER_01: We've got lots of IP-rich, multidisciplinary, platform technologies kind of circulating between all three, but innovation broadly happening in those areas.
1:34
SPEAKER_01: Today we're going to be focusing on the industrial space and on a particular domain that's having a moment.
1:41
SPEAKER_01: That moment is critical mineral recycling, precious metal recovery.
1:45
SPEAKER_01: If you've opened up the papers, if you watch the news, you will understand just how important it is for our future and the technologies that are going to underpin our future to have access to certain precious metals, without which we're not going anywhere, we're not doing anything.
2:04
SPEAKER_01: And as a result, these precious metals have become a geopolitical hot potato.
2:09
SPEAKER_01: China has a lot of them, Russia has a lot of them.
2:12
SPEAKER_01: The West doesn't have as much of them as it would like.
2:16
SPEAKER_01: And so it has to figure out other ways to get access to them.
2:20
SPEAKER_01: One of the biggest ways is through something called e-waste.
2:23
SPEAKER_01: E-waste, electronic waste, is one of the fastest-growing forms of waste in the world.
2:29
SPEAKER_01: And there are a whole breed of new innovators out there who are taking over from smelters who would traditionally do this kind of work to extract and recover the precious metal on electronic waste, think printed circuit boards, drink a lot of old hardware.
2:46
SPEAKER_01: And so they're having a moment.
2:48
SPEAKER_01: They're getting investment.
2:49
SPEAKER_01: This is a classic lab-to-market journey for chemistry and chemical engineering and scale up areas that have had a difficult time in terms of investment, but this one is having its moment for sure.
3:02
SPEAKER_01: These guys are attracting investment.
3:04
SPEAKER_01: So I want to get into it today and understand a little bit why, where the opportunities are, where the battle is going to be fought.
3:11
SPEAKER_01: There's a second purpose to today's discussion, too, and that is to talk a little bit about leadership transitions.
3:18
SPEAKER_01: We analyze hundreds of companies every week.
3:21
SPEAKER_01: It's by analyzing the companies that we get insights, that we get access to talent, that we figure out how this world works.
3:29
SPEAKER_01: And we know that the most common transition point on the lab to market journey is somewhere between TRL six and eight.
3:36
SPEAKER_01: So TRL six, seven, late seven is a very common area.
3:41
SPEAKER_01: The closer companies are getting to the market, the more likely it is value chains are going to accept these new companies and their solutions.
3:49
SPEAKER_01: Maybe there's a big fundraise against which new investors are going to have to see new leadership in a company.
3:56
SPEAKER_01: It's a common theme.
3:57
SPEAKER_01: We see it again and again.
3:59
SPEAKER_01: And the most common type of executive joining a company at that stage is a corporate executive, a larger corporate executive.
4:06
SPEAKER_01: We see it every single time.
4:08
SPEAKER_01: It's not another startup executive, it's a larger corporate executive with deep experience in scaling things far beyond TRLA, but actually building, building big businesses as we would all recognize them.
4:19
SPEAKER_01: And so I want to understand this from the perspective of the corporate executive.
4:24
SPEAKER_01: What kind of opportunities do they see in this startup world?
4:27
SPEAKER_01: How are they reading this lab-to-mark journey?
4:30
SPEAKER_01: What are the challenges they feel they have to contend with?
4:33
SPEAKER_01: Joining me today is a great guy to get into this with.
4:37
SPEAKER_01: His name is Matt Bettingfield.
4:38
SPEAKER_01: He's the CEO of a company called Mint Innovation.
4:41
SPEAKER_01: They're in the critical mineral recycling business.
4:44
SPEAKER_01: And he's got a long background as an executive in finance roles and operational roles, leadership roles in precious metal recovery and mineral recycling.
4:53
SPEAKER_01: This is going to be a wonderful conversation.
4:55
SPEAKER_01: I hope you enjoy.
4:56
SPEAKER_01: Let's get into it.
4:57
SPEAKER_00: Matt Bettingfield, thank you so much for joining me.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: Chris, I very much appreciate you taking the time and look forward to the conversation.
5:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, likewise.
5:05
SPEAKER_01: We are going to get into the world of critical mineral recycling, which is having its moment, as you and I have discussed already.
5:14
SPEAKER_01: I want us to start, though, by diving into leadership transitions, and in particular yours.
5:23
SPEAKER_01: You are an executive with a corporate background, a corporate background within metals and recycling, Novellus, TriAurs Aluminum, the VLAN group.
5:34
SPEAKER_01: These are all big metals recycling groups.
5:38
SPEAKER_01: And at around this time last year, you made the decision to join a deep tech startup, Mint Innovation.
5:44
SPEAKER_01: From your perspective as a previous corporate executive, considering opportunities within startups, what was it about the mint story that was so compelling?
5:57
SPEAKER_01: And this is kind of a secondary question.
6:00
SPEAKER_01: What kinds of things should startups be aware of when they're trying to attract corporate executives like yourself when it comes time for them to scale up?
6:09
SPEAKER_00: So that's a question I've thought about a lot.
6:11
SPEAKER_00: And you're right.
6:12
SPEAKER_00: For most of my career, I have been a corporate guy.
6:16
SPEAKER_00: But I would say I've always erred on the side of development within those corporations and growth.
6:22
SPEAKER_00: I've always had a pretty high tolerance for risk, and I like to drive change.
6:27
SPEAKER_00: I mean, at Novellus, our tagline was disruption by design.
6:31
SPEAKER_00: We set out in a fairly stagnant industry.
6:34
SPEAKER_00: And I don't mean that as a negative on the industry.
6:36
SPEAKER_00: There just hadn't been much growth in manufacturing and in that space for a few decades.
6:40
SPEAKER_00: And Novellus was very ambitious in how they went about it.
6:43
SPEAKER_00: And I was in that corporate strategy group.
6:45
SPEAKER_00: So helped set the global recycling strategy.
6:48
SPEAKER_00: They're now the largest aluminum recycler in the world as well.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: We deployed billions of dollars of capital in a very short amount of time.
6:55
SPEAKER_00: Then I was deployed into the recycling business unit to help set that global supply chain, build those assets, and create that business unit.
7:03
SPEAKER_00: So it was even building then.
7:05
SPEAKER_00: When I joined Trieros, I was lucky enough to be part of a management transition where the CEO, the COO, and me as the CCO all changed.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: We had just come under new ownership by UACJ in Japan.
7:20
SPEAKER_00: But during that period, we were able to change that company.
7:24
SPEAKER_00: We grew it significantly.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: We deployed another$600 million in capital to grow our recycling efforts, our rolling capabilities.
7:32
SPEAKER_00: So even then, building.
7:34
SPEAKER_00: At VLAN, I was brought in as CFO, which is not that material.
7:39
SPEAKER_00: This goes back to the self-awareness of what are you good at?
7:42
SPEAKER_00: What are you not good at?
7:43
SPEAKER_00: But I was really there to sort of shape what North America looked like, integrate a large acquisition, but all the while build out a recycling business within VLAN.
7:52
SPEAKER_00: So I took that from just me, not even titled as a recycling person at the time, to building out the executive team under me, building the business case and ultimately executing the construction of a$120 million secondary smelter here in Kentucky, and then making a large acquisition of a roughly 200-person recycling company in St.
8:12
SPEAKER_00: Louis.
8:13
SPEAKER_00: That recycling company is what turned me on to electronic waste.
8:18
SPEAKER_00: We were dealing with 40, 50 million pounds of it a year, and we were having to sell to smelters outside of the country.
8:25
SPEAKER_00: So that's what alerted me to the capability gap that we have in the United States, to the gap that we have in having the critical minerals that you hear so much about today to support all the reshoring efforts, all the growth in AI, all the energy transition.
8:41
SPEAKER_00: It sort of gave me a purpose within this space.
8:44
SPEAKER_00: And that purpose alignment is what ultimately led me to Mint.
8:48
SPEAKER_01: That's an amazing answer.
8:50
SPEAKER_01: So at VLAN, this e-waste discovery, if you will, and then the discussions around that, and of course, the value of these materials, it's a geopolitical hot potato right now.
9:03
SPEAKER_01: It was a part of the Biden administration.
9:06
SPEAKER_01: We know it's been a part of the Trump administration.
9:09
SPEAKER_01: That in a way then, I guess, narrowed your focus when it came time to think about, okay, what else might I want to do?
9:17
SPEAKER_01: It was to dive deeper into that area.
9:19
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
9:20
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think people who are wired to try to drive change need to look at the market and figure out where am I going to be most effective?
9:30
SPEAKER_00: What is going to be different because I put my effort there?
9:33
SPEAKER_00: And I think this space is one of those spaces.
9:37
SPEAKER_00: And we need as many people focused on it as we possibly can.
9:41
SPEAKER_00: We need the ecosystem to succeed here.
9:44
SPEAKER_00: It's not a one company wins.
9:46
SPEAKER_00: This is a very complicated space.
9:48
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of different streams, a lot of different metals that we need to frankly catch up to our competition with, and our competition not being another company, our competition being China.
10:00
SPEAKER_01: Let me ask one more question on the exploration for you.
10:03
SPEAKER_01: So it sounds like you were emerging at the end of this.
10:07
SPEAKER_01: You knew that you wanted to get deeper into the space.
10:10
SPEAKER_01: So in some ways, a company like Mint Innovation is pushing at an open door.
10:15
SPEAKER_01: But generally, as an executive, as a corporate executive, when you look at startups, in particular deep tech startups, often delivering solutions or trying to deliver solutions in very conservative-run industries.
10:30
SPEAKER_01: What are the kinds of things these startups can do to kind of capture the attention or to attract corporate executives like yourself to help them scale?
10:43
SPEAKER_00: That's a great question.
10:44
SPEAKER_00: I think there's a few things.
10:45
SPEAKER_00: One, and this applied to Mint, is founder alignment.
10:50
SPEAKER_00: I think the founder needs to be ready to make that transition.
10:54
SPEAKER_00: With me, that was clear, because our founder is the one who recruited me.
10:57
SPEAKER_00: And that's a big confidence builder that the organization's ready.
11:01
SPEAKER_00: The second one I think is attracting a corporate executive is one thing.
11:05
SPEAKER_00: Attracting the right corporate executive is another.
11:08
SPEAKER_00: I built things within those corporations, but there was always a safety net under me.
11:13
SPEAKER_00: I always had access to corporate resources.
11:16
SPEAKER_00: So if I wanted to go do things, I could, but I always had that access.
11:21
SPEAKER_00: And you don't have that in a startup.
11:24
SPEAKER_00: So I think we each have our natural space within the business cycle.
11:29
SPEAKER_00: If you put me in a business that's successful today, that you want to remain status quo, that is a bad decision.
11:36
SPEAKER_00: But there are great executives out there who that's exactly where they belong, that's where they dominate, they've got the attention to detail.
11:43
SPEAKER_00: So I think understanding who that is a corporate executive fits that mold of high risk tolerance, dealing with chaotic situations, and wearing multiple hats.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: That's a very important thing.
11:57
SPEAKER_01: And so in a lot of ways, it becomes self-selecting.
12:01
SPEAKER_00: I think so.
12:02
SPEAKER_00: While that safety net, that corporate structure, it gives people a feeling of certainty and safety.
12:09
SPEAKER_00: For some, it can also feel a bit like handcuffs.
12:12
SPEAKER_00: And the further you go and the more you try to drive things, the more you're going to recognize that in yourself.
12:18
SPEAKER_00: So if you're at the right level, you'll know where you want to go.
12:21
SPEAKER_00: So I think it's be patient, have the conversations, don't rush into a decision.
12:27
SPEAKER_00: Because even for me, with my high tolerance for risk, with my love of chaos, there are days where I hit my limit.
12:34
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure.
12:35
SPEAKER_01: Let me push back gently or just raise a couple of other points.
12:39
SPEAKER_01: What about the level of capitalization in the company, or the quality of talent in the company, or where it is in terms of its technology readiness, or its production readiness, or its level of commercialization, or its level of novelty?
12:58
SPEAKER_01: How novel is the solution we're actually talking about?
13:00
SPEAKER_01: How copyable is it?
13:02
SPEAKER_01: How important are those factors to you?
13:04
SPEAKER_00: I think novelty is always a good thing, assuming that it is profitable, that you can scale it.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: Having something that is not recreatable is always going to be sexy to people to say, I'm the one who brought that to market.
13:21
SPEAKER_00: I like the name of your podcast, Lab to Market.
13:24
SPEAKER_00: I do think it skips a middle step of industrialization.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: And I think being at the right TRL readiness level to have someone like me come in is key.
13:35
SPEAKER_00: If you're truly at the lab scale, this is probably not the right time.
13:39
SPEAKER_00: But when you get to the point where you're doing that novel activity at full scale, and now what you need to build around it is the science of manufacturing, industrial design, those things to make it repeatable, efficient, profitable.
13:55
SPEAKER_00: That's the right time to take the step to bring someone with some breadth in the corporate world, someone with some depth in the specific market that you're entering, versus the science that you use to develop the novel tech.
14:09
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
14:10
SPEAKER_01: And just for our listeners and the benefit of this discussion, that's typically what we find when we're analyzing companies.
14:16
SPEAKER_01: The most popular transition point is the transition point I suspect mint is at, more or less, when we've got working pilots, either TRL six or seven, we've got early production, we've got some early commercialization activity too.
14:30
SPEAKER_01: We've validated it to an extent.
14:33
SPEAKER_01: We've raised capital.
14:34
SPEAKER_01: We now need to kind of push on and demonstrate that we can operate at the scale the industry is going to require, whatever that looks like, whether we're scaling up, whether we're scaling out via a more modular process, whatever.
14:47
SPEAKER_01: But that is the most popular time for a leadership transition like this, especially for CEOs.
14:54
SPEAKER_01: So I would absolutely agree with you.
14:56
SPEAKER_01: I think too early and the CEO isn't going to really know what to do, and the company might not know what to do with the CEO.
15:03
SPEAKER_01: But at just the right time, then it can be the right kind of marriage.
15:06
SPEAKER_01: And it's just about getting it to work.
15:08
SPEAKER_01: One last question on this, though, for you.
15:10
SPEAKER_01: When you think about the journey going forward and appreciating the difference between this and the work that you've done before, are there any parts of the job?
15:20
SPEAKER_01: I'm kind of putting you on the spot here, but are there any parts of the job that scare you a little bit or that you think, you know, I'm a little worried about that, or what the hell is raising capital?
15:30
SPEAKER_01: How the hell am I going to do that?
15:32
SPEAKER_01: Or whatever.
15:32
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm scared constantly, but it's a bit invigorating.
15:37
SPEAKER_00: I think anyone who is at the stage where we are where we're raising capital, where we're scaling, if they say they're not scared, if they say that things don't keep them up at night, they're either crazy or they're lying.
15:48
SPEAKER_00: But that's great.
15:49
SPEAKER_00: That means there's passion behind it.
15:52
SPEAKER_00: Take what I said before, for instance.
15:54
SPEAKER_00: I'm extremely good with risk.
15:57
SPEAKER_00: It does not bother me.
15:58
SPEAKER_00: Chaos does not bother me.
16:00
SPEAKER_00: The people who develop the technology are all engineers and chemists and scientists.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: That is not a natural fit for them.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: So trying to take the chaos that's seemingly happening as we're raising capital, as we're building a vision for the future that may or may not align with the original intent, where maybe it was more chemistry focused.
16:23
SPEAKER_00: Now we talk recycling, we talk supply chain, trying to translate that to them to give that feeling of safety, the feeling of some certainty to help them make that cross as well.
16:34
SPEAKER_00: That's a big stress point.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: I'm working on moving it from New Zealand to the US and expanding here.
16:41
SPEAKER_00: Geographies could not be further away.
16:43
SPEAKER_00: From a cultural perspective, when we go out for a beer, we're very, very similar.
16:48
SPEAKER_00: The way we do business, the pace we do business, how we communicate in business, very different.
16:53
SPEAKER_00: So managing all of those things, I think is it's challenging.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: It's exciting.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: At times it's scary.
16:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
17:00
SPEAKER_01: Let's kind of dive into the metal recycling piece now.
17:04
SPEAKER_01: How are you seeing this opportunity right now?
17:08
SPEAKER_01: I would really value your insight because you've grown up in this industry.
17:12
SPEAKER_01: And now we're seeing it become front and center and kind of a linchpin on which so much of our technology future is going to rest.
17:22
SPEAKER_01: Not just technology, by the way, but all kinds of industries.
17:26
SPEAKER_01: We need metals to keep on moving.
17:29
SPEAKER_01: And we need to get access to these.
17:31
SPEAKER_01: And we know that some countries have a lot and some countries don't have so much.
17:36
SPEAKER_01: And so, how are we going to be able to deal with this?
17:39
SPEAKER_01: How are you seeing this as an opportunity right now?
17:42
SPEAKER_00: It's nothing but opportunity.
17:44
SPEAKER_00: And the stars are aligning.
17:46
SPEAKER_00: The reshoring that started years ago, we started caring about that manufacturing backbone, that musculature that the U.S.
17:55
SPEAKER_00: lost and other countries as well.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: And they're starting to value the sovereign supply chain side of things.
18:01
SPEAKER_00: You're seeing governments that aren't just the U.S.
18:04
SPEAKER_00: looking at critical minerals differently.
18:06
SPEAKER_00: So you have the demand being generated.
18:09
SPEAKER_00: The demand is only increasing because everything we're doing to evolve as a society requires exactly the same metals and in large force.
18:18
SPEAKER_00: Electronic vehicles take four times as much copper as internal combustion.
18:23
SPEAKER_00: All the energy transition, solar panels, wind farms, they take extreme amounts of these critical minerals and copper.
18:31
SPEAKER_00: Data centers, good lord, the amount of demand that they're generating for all of these materials.
18:36
SPEAKER_00: And then on the back end, from an e-waste perspective, data centers are also making my feedstock market extremely attractive.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: But the way that the supply chains have been set up over the last decades, and it wasn't wrong, we go through phases and cycles just like the businesses do.
18:54
SPEAKER_00: But we followed the cheaper cost, the more efficient cost model, and that took all of our manufacturing, all of our upstream processing overseas.
19:04
SPEAKER_00: We have to bring that back at this point, or we can do all the reshoring in the world we want.
19:09
SPEAKER_00: But with the current geopolitical hotbeds that we're seeing, and I don't think anyone forecasts those going away, if we don't fully vertically integrate in country, the risk is only going up.
19:22
SPEAKER_00: So all of that gets put at risk, which makes the opportunity massive.
19:26
SPEAKER_00: And it makes winning in this space a sovereign level goal versus a company level goal, because it's not just Mint that's going to solve this problem.
19:36
SPEAKER_00: It's not even just the big guys like Clinkor who are going to solve it.
19:40
SPEAKER_00: We need a combination of technologies to deal with very complex streams in a very complex supply chain.
19:47
SPEAKER_01: The traditional ways of handling this kind of metal recovery.
19:53
SPEAKER_01: I mean, e-waste hasn't been a thing that I think most of the world has heard about, maybe even still.
20:00
SPEAKER_01: In our business, we work with companies who are dealing with e-waste, and you're obviously dealing with e-waste.
20:05
SPEAKER_01: And now we're seeing a whole breed of innovators that are starting to deal with e-waste.
20:10
SPEAKER_01: Traditionally, am I right in thinking that e-waste would have been dealt with by the smelters?
20:16
SPEAKER_01: 100%.
20:17
SPEAKER_01: And smelters are inefficient and they're smelly and they're costly and so on.
20:22
SPEAKER_00: Smelly part I cannot attest to.
20:24
SPEAKER_00: But they are very costly and they take time to build and they take permitting to build.
20:28
SPEAKER_00: So you're looking at a seven to ten year build, probably over a billion dollars to do so, probably well over a billion in the US to do so.
20:37
SPEAKER_00: And that's if you can get the permitting around.
20:40
SPEAKER_00: And that's a big challenge.
20:41
SPEAKER_00: And they do consume massive amounts of energy.
20:44
SPEAKER_00: Over the years, the technology has gotten much better, but there's also metals that they can't recover.
20:50
SPEAKER_00: Lithium would be an example of that.
20:52
SPEAKER_00: So there are weaknesses.
20:53
SPEAKER_00: And we're going to need smelters.
20:55
SPEAKER_00: We're going to need smelters.
20:56
SPEAKER_00: We're going to need mines.
20:57
SPEAKER_00: We're going to need hydrometallurgy.
20:59
SPEAKER_00: We're going to need chromatography and other technologies that are still being developed.
21:03
SPEAKER_00: But when you combine those technologies, you end up with a pretty good ladder.
21:08
SPEAKER_00: You know, like hydrometallurgy plants.
21:10
SPEAKER_00: We can be built in anywhere from one to two year time frame, as opposed to the seven to ten.
21:15
SPEAKER_01: And this is what Mint focuses on.
21:16
SPEAKER_01: Is that right?
21:17
SPEAKER_00: Correct.
21:17
SPEAKER_00: So we get up much more quickly.
21:19
SPEAKER_00: We are at the TRL 8 level, call it.
21:23
SPEAKER_00: So we're ready to scale this technology.
21:26
SPEAKER_00: Chromatography, probably a little bit earlier on that development and a little bit smaller scale.
21:30
SPEAKER_00: They're right size for the rare earth side of things.
21:33
SPEAKER_00: And that's where they're mostly focused on.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: You've got your redwood materials and other battery recyclers, which is a totally different byproduct that is coming and is real.
21:42
SPEAKER_00: That's lithium, nickel, and cobalt.
21:44
SPEAKER_00: All that is necessary.
21:46
SPEAKER_00: And then you've got your smelters that can take electronic waste, they can take your catalytic converters and get your PTM group metals, but they're largely focused on either copper or zinc.
21:57
SPEAKER_00: And they used uh printed circuit boards and things like.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: That as sort of sweeteners as they melt.
22:02
SPEAKER_01: And so, in your view, the fact that we're going to continue to need smelters because they're going to continue to do an important job.
22:09
SPEAKER_01: And yet you're also mentioning all of these other fairly innovative players with different types of technology as the active agent or fueling the active agent for the recovery process.
22:23
SPEAKER_01: I don't get the sense that this is necessarily a standards war and that there's going to be a place for lots of different platform technologies within this area.
22:32
SPEAKER_00: There is.
22:33
SPEAKER_00: It all depends on what people are looking for.
22:36
SPEAKER_00: Traceability is actually becoming a big topic now.
22:39
SPEAKER_00: We've had the most specific instance of traceability with our HP process, where we actually take end-of-life HP assets and convert it back to copper that goes into their new assets.
22:50
SPEAKER_00: So totally closed loop.
22:51
SPEAKER_00: And because of our batch process, we can do that.
22:54
SPEAKER_00: But at a higher level, the governments are putting in place things like, and forgive me, I forgot what the acronym stands for, but it's DFARS, D F A R S.
23:03
SPEAKER_00: And what it says, it's a government procurement, a requirement that components cannot be manufactured in China.
23:12
SPEAKER_00: And they've just expanded that starting this coming January to where it goes all the way back to where they are mined.
23:18
SPEAKER_00: So understanding where your components are made, where your metals manufactured, and having the traceability there is going to be a requirement to do a lot of business going forward.
23:29
SPEAKER_00: So we have to really rethink these supply chains.
23:32
SPEAKER_00: We're building that plane while we're flying it.
23:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it sounds it.
23:36
SPEAKER_01: Is there one particular metric, or are there a couple of particular metrics that you think most of the battles to be fought in this space, if I can use that term, are going to be around?
23:48
SPEAKER_01: Is it feedstock?
23:50
SPEAKER_01: Is it cost?
23:51
SPEAKER_01: Is it capital?
23:52
SPEAKER_01: Is it chemistry?
23:53
SPEAKER_01: Is it something else?
23:55
SPEAKER_01: How do you see that shaping out?
23:58
SPEAKER_00: It's all of those things.
23:59
SPEAKER_00: And I know that's a sort of cop-out answer.
24:02
SPEAKER_00: I might as well have said it depends.
24:04
SPEAKER_00: But getting your feedstock and getting it at a cost-effective level is always going to be critical.
24:09
SPEAKER_00: And it goes without saying you need to recover the metals that you buy.
24:13
SPEAKER_00: But I think the one that you hit on is capital.
24:16
SPEAKER_00: And in order to make all of these investments, capital needs to keep up and capital needs to be comfortable because these are multi-generational investments.
24:25
SPEAKER_00: These are not short-term investments.
24:27
SPEAKER_00: The hold is going to be longer to generate returns.
24:31
SPEAKER_00: So investors need to believe in the long-term viability and that critical minerals are not just the flavor of the day.
24:39
SPEAKER_00: I think they should start believing that.
24:41
SPEAKER_00: But when you have policy whiplash and things of that nature, it has a very much a chilling effect on investors' willingness to take a bet and to fund these types of long-term investments.
24:54
SPEAKER_00: So I think that's going to be a big determination factor of winning here.
24:59
SPEAKER_01: Do you think the investors are keeping up generally, though?
25:02
SPEAKER_01: And there might be a difference here between investors that you're seeing in the US or North America or in other territories and investors that we see on this side of the pond in the UK and Europe.
25:11
SPEAKER_01: How sophisticated are they in their analysis of the opportunities here and where the risks lie and what the hold is going to be like for the capital, but the wider longer-term opportunity as well.
25:22
SPEAKER_01: Are they adapting enough?
25:23
SPEAKER_01: Do they get this?
25:24
SPEAKER_00: I think they do.
25:26
SPEAKER_00: And I guess I turn it around on us because every investment a group makes has an opportunity cost, unless they have infinite amounts of money.
25:34
SPEAKER_00: So we have to earn our right to be in their portfolio.
25:38
SPEAKER_00: And we have to grow up and be able to speak in their terms to get them there.
25:42
SPEAKER_00: So that's our responsibility to do.
25:44
SPEAKER_00: And it's complex problems.
25:46
SPEAKER_00: And the investors I speak with, they have the appetite to dig in and understand complex issues.
25:53
SPEAKER_00: I think one of the challenges is recycling itself.
25:57
SPEAKER_00: One, it sounds like something you do altruistically.
26:00
SPEAKER_00: And two, it sounds like it's one activity.
26:03
SPEAKER_00: It's neither.
26:05
SPEAKER_00: I've always said that recycling metals is where the right thing meets the profitable thing.
26:10
SPEAKER_00: And that is a perfect storm.
26:13
SPEAKER_00: So trying to get them to understand that there's a lot of money to be made in this.
26:17
SPEAKER_00: And with commodities pricing the way that they are, it's going up significantly and we'll continue to do so based on the demand of those commodities.
26:26
SPEAKER_00: But we've seen various battery recycling companies struggle here.
26:31
SPEAKER_00: We've seen others come and go.
26:34
SPEAKER_00: The black mass recycling stream is a totally different issue from e-waste, is a totally different issue from copper.
26:41
SPEAKER_00: They look the same, they're both called recycling, but the processes are different.
26:45
SPEAKER_00: The supply chains, how the feed stock is developing is totally different.
26:49
SPEAKER_00: So I think that overgeneralization is probably the trap most people fall into.
26:53
SPEAKER_00: They say, Well, I got burnt by a recycling in this X market a couple of years ago.
26:58
SPEAKER_00: So we're not into recycling anymore.
27:00
SPEAKER_00: That's a big statement.
27:02
SPEAKER_00: That's like saying I'm not into manufacturing anymore because one product failed versus another.
27:07
SPEAKER_00: So I think that's probably the heaviest lift on education is saying, I get it, but let me give you a little bit of nuance to that and explain why these things are different.
27:17
SPEAKER_01: I think that's a great point.
27:19
SPEAKER_01: And I hadn't fully appreciated, but from the discussions that we've had with different stakeholders around this world, that is something that we've heard from time to time.
27:28
SPEAKER_01: That, well, we've tried recycling.
27:30
SPEAKER_01: I'm not so sure we're going to be up for it again.
27:33
SPEAKER_01: So I think education actually winds up being a huge part of this whole process, too.
27:39
SPEAKER_01: I wonder if the requirements.
27:41
SPEAKER_01: So I'm thinking of capitalization now.
27:43
SPEAKER_01: And I'm thinking of actually being in a startup and being in a company like Mint Innovation.
27:49
SPEAKER_01: And what these companies need to do now to demonstrate that they can make the journey and the requirements that the investors are going to place on them as they go through that journey.
28:02
SPEAKER_01: So the seed stage, we understand, Series A, we broadly understand.
28:07
SPEAKER_01: Series B has become a very different exercise from what it used to be.
28:13
SPEAKER_01: Often at Series B, companies are graduating to a commercial grade first of a kind.
28:20
SPEAKER_01: They've got commercial offtakes.
28:22
SPEAKER_01: They should have commercial offtake agreements in place by then.
28:25
SPEAKER_01: Maybe they're some of the way down the track in terms of building their second of a kind, not their first of a kind.
28:32
SPEAKER_01: And the requirements for Series B investors are severe, making them almost competitive or putting them as an option along with project finance and state-backed guarantees.
28:47
SPEAKER_01: And so, really, the equity stories about seed and series A, and by Series B, if you've done it right, you should be able to avail yourself to other forms of capital, not just equity.
28:58
SPEAKER_01: Are you finding something similar?
29:00
SPEAKER_01: We are.
29:01
SPEAKER_00: There's a gap between, let's say, venture capital and growth equity.
29:06
SPEAKER_00: And it takes a while to commercialize these things, the expectations around being able to contract.
29:12
SPEAKER_00: And the scrap industry does not contract.
29:15
SPEAKER_00: That is just not how it operates.
29:16
SPEAKER_00: It's open trading, and the scrap traders love doing it day in and day out.
29:22
SPEAKER_00: So if you ever got them to sign a contract, it's probably not going to be great terms because they're thinking that tomorrow they're going to do even better than they did today.
29:31
SPEAKER_00: And in many cases, they're right.
29:33
SPEAKER_00: And that's why I love working with them.
29:34
SPEAKER_00: But when you're trying to raise capital and explain that dynamic, you're like, well, maybe you can just find one.
29:41
SPEAKER_00: And you can get MOUs all day long.
29:44
SPEAKER_00: But most of the time, an MOU says, I'll sell you my volume if you pay market price.
29:49
SPEAKER_00: Well, okay, no joke.
29:50
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't really say much.
29:52
SPEAKER_00: So getting people's minds around that is really interesting, getting people to understand that tech risk means risk on things that have not been done elsewhere, versus ramp risk, which is where we start to supply known technology around that novel risk to help and walk investors through that to understand where that risk is and how to define it.
30:14
SPEAKER_00: And then the off-take piece you mentioned, we're getting off takes now, but we sell copper and gold.
30:20
SPEAKER_00: They're both globally indexed or you can deliver to warehouses.
30:24
SPEAKER_00: So there aren't very many things in the world that are easier to sell than that.
30:29
SPEAKER_00: So again, educating people on the difference in this business and this segment of the supply chain than others.
30:37
SPEAKER_01: And on that point, I don't know how much more you can kind of add to the price when you're selling them back something they can get from elsewhere as well.
30:47
SPEAKER_01: And that probably goes back to the point you were making.
30:49
SPEAKER_01: How much more can you add to the price, to the package that you're offering them beyond the value of the metal itself?
30:57
SPEAKER_00: So that's where the direct question you're asking around the end product, you're talking about a green premium, basically, which is due to recycle content, traceability, things of that nature, you charge a premium.
31:11
SPEAKER_00: And depending on what certain customers value, how they talk about their supply chain, their sustainability strategy, and what their mandates are from their investors, that is achievable.
31:22
SPEAKER_00: We've achieved it ourselves in one instance.
31:26
SPEAKER_00: But the other place where you can add value is through vertical integration.
31:30
SPEAKER_00: And I think about recycling as a service.
31:33
SPEAKER_00: So I view printed circuit boards as feedstock.
31:36
SPEAKER_00: Businesses don't have printed circuit boards.
31:39
SPEAKER_00: They have printers and servers and laptops.
31:42
SPEAKER_00: So unless I go to them and take those whole units and I'm willing to dismantle them and create what I call the easy button, I'm not going to be able to interact with them and I'm not going to be able to close the loop.
31:53
SPEAKER_00: So their services and fees and ability to do that to close that loop and take it from their dock and be able to service them in a timely manner because these are things that, although they're valuable, they're getting in the way of their manufacturing process.
32:08
SPEAKER_00: They're creating an unsafe work environment for them.
32:10
SPEAKER_00: So I need to build it in a timely way, take those assets from them, dismantle them, and give them traceability as to what we did with each of those units and hopefully return the end product back to them to feed into their next generation of goods.
32:25
SPEAKER_01: I get that.
32:26
SPEAKER_01: And I could see the value of a premium there.
32:28
SPEAKER_01: That makes a lot of sense.
32:29
SPEAKER_01: So you're making additional headache go away by making it much neater.
32:34
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
32:34
SPEAKER_00: It's creates a sticky relationship, or like I said, I call it the easy button.
32:38
SPEAKER_01: I'm curious, you know, to kind of dive into some of the skills and the experience that you bring as a manager from some of the corporate world.
32:46
SPEAKER_01: And corporates are often very good at thinking about these other things, at putting together these full service wrappers around a solution like that.
32:55
SPEAKER_01: And they've got the credibility in the marketplace, the trust, and so on.
32:59
SPEAKER_01: What kinds of things do you think, as you look across not just mint innovation?
33:05
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you guys have this licked, but across other startups, what kinds of things do startups often miss?
33:12
SPEAKER_01: An example would be what you've just discussed, these other bits that are so important that aren't necessarily high-tech, but are where some of the additional value could lie.
33:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I think it's what you just said.
33:25
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the statement that you hear that just makes me cringe is we don't do that.
33:30
SPEAKER_00: If it gives us an advantage and it ties and gets us closer to our customers, yes, we do.
33:36
SPEAKER_00: And we need to figure out how to do that.
33:39
SPEAKER_00: We're solving a problem in our terms.
33:41
SPEAKER_00: Customers don't see it from our terms, they see it from the problems as they articulate them.
33:46
SPEAKER_00: So you need to go to market and meet them where they are.
33:49
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's a stretch because when you've put your life and your identity into developing technology, it's a wonderful thing, but you have to be able to translate that into what the market needs and go to meet them in order to make it successful.
34:04
SPEAKER_00: Solving the problem in our own terms, that's a privilege.
34:09
SPEAKER_00: And it's a privilege that we only get once the market accepts us and acknowledges that it solves their problem too.
34:15
SPEAKER_01: And I would say that in the spin-out community, we see an awful lot of challenges there because so much emphasis is placed on the fundamental technology.
34:24
SPEAKER_01: We see far too many companies getting to TRLA, actually, so few companies, and in this space too.
34:31
SPEAKER_01: I suspect over the next few years we may see more.
34:33
SPEAKER_01: And I think it's these additional value add wrappers, which aren't high-tech, which are service-oriented, which are much more customer oriented that we often forget about in the venture-backed startup and spin-out world.
34:49
SPEAKER_00: I fully agree.
34:50
SPEAKER_00: And I mean, we went through our growing pains with that too.
34:52
SPEAKER_00: We still are.
34:53
SPEAKER_00: In a large corporate, you can have a marketing division that cares about exactly what I just said.
34:58
SPEAKER_00: And you can have an RD division that only cares about what they're trying to solve.
35:02
SPEAKER_00: So you have a translator in between.
35:05
SPEAKER_00: In the startup world, we're all wearing all of those hats.
35:08
SPEAKER_00: So we have to be flexible in how we think about it.
35:11
SPEAKER_00: And that's tough.
35:12
SPEAKER_00: That is not a natural skill set most people have.
35:16
SPEAKER_00: And honestly, not having that skill set is what makes our scientists and our engineers so good at what they do.
35:23
SPEAKER_00: So it's a really interesting razor's edge we have to walk here to be able to stay true to what we're trying to do while also be relevant in the market space.
35:32
SPEAKER_01: What do you feel the additional skills and experience that companies at mince stage of development right now really need to prioritize?
35:41
SPEAKER_00: So I think you need almost utility knives, especially at the top.
35:46
SPEAKER_00: People who are not deep specialists.
35:49
SPEAKER_00: For instance, my general counsel is also a big military background.
35:54
SPEAKER_00: So he is handling all of our legal work while he's also building out our data destruction side of the business and dealing with the government.
36:03
SPEAKER_00: So he can speak their language and he brings the compliance side of it.
36:06
SPEAKER_00: So most lawyers wouldn't touch that.
36:09
SPEAKER_00: Joe is getting excited about it.
36:12
SPEAKER_00: My head of operations, he has run plants, he has built plants, he's a PhD metallurgist, he's a rare combination.
36:19
SPEAKER_00: So I can put him in front of investors, whereas most people with that skill set, I probably wouldn't.
36:24
SPEAKER_00: So I think you need those people who are very flexible.
36:28
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Will, our founder, he's a PhD chemist and a patent attorney.
36:33
SPEAKER_00: So he was able to develop the tech while protecting the tech and see all those things.
36:38
SPEAKER_00: And he's between me and him in front of investors, we're very yin and yang and very complimentary.
36:44
SPEAKER_00: So I think that's what you've got to look for is people who can wear multiple hats and allow your subject matters experts to focus because that leader is going to need to translate between two very different audiences.
36:57
SPEAKER_01: So still staying a little bit broad at TRLA with your general management, with your leadership team.
37:03
SPEAKER_01: So individuals, as you've just said, you can wear multiple hats.
37:07
SPEAKER_01: And often we see in companies and boards start to narrow the scope a little bit.
37:12
SPEAKER_01: They start to get quite focused.
37:14
SPEAKER_01: So the lane is narrower and they're going much deeper.
37:18
SPEAKER_01: But you're making a case for still keeping them a little broad because you need to be, I guess it is still in the life cycle of the company, it is still early.
37:26
SPEAKER_01: Having a commercial grade first of a kind, scaling up the next plant and the next plant or the next facility or the next site or whatever is still fairly early in the company's development.
37:36
SPEAKER_01: So it's not like we're an advanced company at that point.
37:39
SPEAKER_00: No, and I do err on that side.
37:42
SPEAKER_00: When you think about the supply chain integration, the vertical integration I'm talking about, you have to be able to connect dots and you have to be sort of flexible in your thinking as you're dealing with those people.
37:51
SPEAKER_00: So I think that requirement is what drives my tendency to keep the top layer more broad.
37:57
SPEAKER_00: Also, as you start building these plants, you need to be able to learn from them and apply learnings and scar tissue that you've gotten from elsewhere.
38:06
SPEAKER_00: So the more breadth of experience you have, the more you can borrow from learnings prior.
38:12
SPEAKER_00: Because greenfields, as you start rolling them out, the day you start digging is the day that plan isn't worth anything.
38:19
SPEAKER_00: So you need to be flexible and nimble and ready to move and be able to pivot when you need to.
38:24
SPEAKER_00: And I think you need a fairly general leader in that space to be able to do so.
38:28
SPEAKER_00: Managing a bunch of people who are very specific and very good at what they do.
38:33
SPEAKER_00: But the leader needs to be able to see different things and dots that other people might not connect.
38:38
SPEAKER_01: How much support do you get from the board?
38:40
SPEAKER_01: Not to put them on the spot, but is it broadly supportive?
38:44
SPEAKER_01: Do you get what you need?
38:46
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think I always have to say yes.
38:48
SPEAKER_00: But but no, all joking aside, no, our board has been extremely supportive.
38:53
SPEAKER_00: And some of them have been with us throughout the whole time and invested in the business.
38:57
SPEAKER_00: They're largely in New Zealand and Australia.
39:00
SPEAKER_00: They're very understanding of having to put up with the redneck guy from the US and the change in tone for me.
39:07
SPEAKER_00: So they've been very supportive in that.
39:09
SPEAKER_00: They've continued to fund us all along the way.
39:12
SPEAKER_00: For them, it's a challenge too, because most of them invested in the tech side.
39:17
SPEAKER_00: And now we talk about the recycling and the supply chain side.
39:20
SPEAKER_00: And we talk about doing it maybe in the farthest place away from them that we could possibly do it.
39:25
SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of trust that they have to give, and they've been extremely supportive in that.
39:30
SPEAKER_01: When you think about the future for critical minerals recycling and e-waste and the space in general, what are the big movements that are likely to happen that are going to that could impact things?
39:45
SPEAKER_01: I'm talking here about externalities.
39:48
SPEAKER_01: Are there potential externalities which could throw up trouble or disruption?
39:53
SPEAKER_00: I mean, sure.
39:54
SPEAKER_00: I think geopolitics right now are a mess.
39:56
SPEAKER_00: And I don't think that's very controversial to say, but that can always put a kink in things.
40:02
SPEAKER_00: We're disrupting trade routes right now that have been built over decades.
40:05
SPEAKER_00: So it really is impacting it right now.
40:08
SPEAKER_00: Policy whiplash, I mentioned earlier, when people stop believing that they're going to get support that was given to them, they're going to quit investing because these are long-term investments.
40:19
SPEAKER_00: They are high dollar investments, and they're really country infrastructure investments.
40:24
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's how we've got to start talking about it.
40:27
SPEAKER_00: When I'm in Washington and I'm talking to Congress or the White House or the Pentagon, one of my favorite things to tell them is electronic waste is about 50 to 100 times more concentrated in precious metals and copper than ore is.
40:43
SPEAKER_00: So 50 to 100 times more concentrated than what we're getting out of mines.
40:47
SPEAKER_00: Yet we view it as a waste stream.
40:48
SPEAKER_00: It's an urban mine.
40:50
SPEAKER_00: And then we should start to view that as a national asset that you can't pick where things go in the ground.
40:55
SPEAKER_00: So we're not going to be able to import mines if it's not already there.
40:59
SPEAKER_00: And it's a multi-decade process to start new mines anyway.
41:02
SPEAKER_00: But if we have to import these things, why not just import it once and then put up the barrier at our border and keep it here and process it here like an urban mine, like it is.
41:13
SPEAKER_01: And are they receptive?
41:14
SPEAKER_00: They are.
41:15
SPEAKER_00: They love the concept.
41:16
SPEAKER_00: It's just a question of where do we start?
41:18
SPEAKER_00: I'll have people talk about export bans.
41:21
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't work because we have a capacity gap, but we also have a capability gap.
41:26
SPEAKER_00: If you were to put an export ban on electronic waste tomorrow, we're just going to build a mountain of it.
41:32
SPEAKER_00: So in my mind, the thing to do is incentivize investment in domestic industry and incentivize companies like the recyclers that we have a strong network of here in the country, incentivize them to supply those domestic refiners.
41:48
SPEAKER_00: That'll help give a hand up while we're coming to scale so that we can ultimately be competitive.
41:53
SPEAKER_00: And it's the carrot versus the stick approach, which I always think is more effective.
41:57
SPEAKER_01: That takes a lot of coordination.
41:59
SPEAKER_01: It does.
42:00
SPEAKER_01: At a policy level, I'm guessing, it takes obviously across the industry.
42:05
SPEAKER_01: And a lot of that comes down to leadership.
42:07
SPEAKER_00: It does.
42:08
SPEAKER_00: And the other thing that we talk about is when the government puts out RFIs, they're looking for a one-stop shop.
42:15
SPEAKER_00: Well, there's very few people who can handle all of this.
42:18
SPEAKER_00: So the only way we can succeed is to behave as an ecosystem and come with partnerships and not believe that we have to do everything within the four walls of our own organization.
42:29
SPEAKER_00: And that's a that is a change in behavior for manufacturing.
42:34
SPEAKER_00: So I think the leadership there has to start viewing it that way because we need the whole ecosystem to be able to provide these services.
42:41
SPEAKER_00: So I think there's a lot of change that's going to have to happen.
42:44
SPEAKER_00: That's why I say this is an and problem, not an or problem.
42:47
SPEAKER_00: When I stay up at night, I'm not worried about another company.
42:50
SPEAKER_00: I'm worried about bringing it all together so that we have enough pieces on the board to keep the metals here.
42:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
42:58
SPEAKER_01: If I think about our audience, which is made up of entrepreneurs and some investors, and maybe the odd policy maker and corporates, a lot of the time we expect to talk about competitors within this field.
43:10
SPEAKER_01: And I think a lot of entrepreneurs are worried about competitors and who's going to be able to get a leg over.
43:15
SPEAKER_01: But what's occurred to me in our discussion is that is just what you've mentioned.
43:20
SPEAKER_01: This is and it's not or at this point.
43:23
SPEAKER_01: And it's about building that consortium and building that momentum and getting those messages out and establishing that narrative, which is, I guess, a part of what you've done and a part of what you'll continue to do, I'm sure.
43:37
SPEAKER_00: It's definitely a part of what I'm trying to do.
43:39
SPEAKER_00: One advantage we have, and I think recycling is fairly unique in this, is everyone can be all things.
43:48
SPEAKER_00: They can be a competitor one day, a supplier the next, and a customer the next.
43:53
SPEAKER_00: So it's a fascinating space because when you don't have someone who fits squarely in one of those boxes, you have to behave as if they're always all three.
44:03
SPEAKER_00: So it's a fun space to be in.
44:05
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of uh collegiality.
44:07
SPEAKER_00: We all know each other.
44:09
SPEAKER_00: So I'm optimistic that we'll figure out a way to work through it and figure out how to partner to solve these complex problems.
44:16
SPEAKER_00: That is a bit of a difference from other spaces that I've found.
44:19
SPEAKER_01: Well, it sounds like you're exactly where you should be, Matt.
44:22
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for taking the time to have this discussion with me and our previous discussions.
44:27
SPEAKER_01: I have thoroughly enjoyed it.
44:28
SPEAKER_01: And I'm sure our listeners are going to enjoy this as well.
44:31
SPEAKER_01: So thank you.
44:32
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
44:32
SPEAKER_00: Like I said, I appreciate the time and the interest and letting me ramble on a little bit.
44:38
SPEAKER_01: That goes for both of us.
44:40
SPEAKER_01: Thank you again.
44:41
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Chris.
44:42
SPEAKER_01: You've been listening to the Lab to Market Leadership Podcast, brought to you by Deep Tech Leaders.
44:48
SPEAKER_01: You can find out more about us on LinkedIn, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.