Financing for precious metal recovery

Phosphonics secured the financing through a second round of investments led by Seventure Partners and backers Regents Park Partners, a London Business School venture capital fund and private investors.

The Abingdon-based company plans to use the capital to fund the global market development of a range of precious metal catalyst recovery products. Currently, very expensive metals such as platinum, rhodium and palladium are lost in dilute, low-parts-per-million waste streams.

These metals are used extensively as catalysts in the manufacture of active pharmaceutical ingredients and fine chemicals.

David Astles, chief executive of Phosphonics, said that the technology comes into play at the back end of chemical processes when small traces of metal catalysts are flushed away through effluence streams.

These streams are pumped through large industrial filters that contain columns filled with a solid-state material based on silica. Phosphonics was able to develop this material through a proprietary chemistry method.

According to Astles, this silica product is capable of capturing small traces of these metals.