Rare earth elements (or REEs) are a crucial component of numerous everyday technologies such as cellphones, computers, and automobiles. REEs are not only difficult and expensive to extract, but their chemical extractions and purification methods release toxic byproducts that have detrimental environmental impacts. Furthermore, the difficulties associated with REE mining lead to most countries relying on imports from a few major players in the industry, making the market monopolistic and extremely volatile. With a growing demand for indispensable technologies, the annual demand for REEs is predicted to double by 2035, highlighting the immediate need for a new sustainable stream of REE sourcing to help meet the demands of the industry.
Our mission is to develop, apply, and distribute an innovative, highly competitive, and sustainable synthetic biology solution for extracting rare earth elements (REEs) from electronic waste, replacing the unsustainable industry standards of the current recycling process.
Our vision is to be leaders in the shift from conventional toxic industrial processes towards environmentally sustainable recovery methods for rare earth elements by introducing our novel, synthetic-biology-based process into the burgeoning e-waste recycling industry.
Neocycle introduces a selective, sustainable, and cost-effective solution that aims to solve the REE scarcity problem by utilizing e-waste as a sustainable new source of REEs. We are providing an effective pipeline process for rare earth metal extraction from electronic waste and other reserves. Our marketable solution consists of two major parts aimed to be novel, eco-friendly alternatives to current industry standards, a REE extraction and separation system. By turning electronic waste into a sustainable source of REEs, we hope to support future technological innovations whilst building towards a cleaner future.
Figure 1. Entrepreneurship Subgroup Organizational Structure.
Our primary target market is the set of companies that perform a) upstream waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) processing i.e. WEEE dismantling right after collection, and b) critical materials recovery, which may or may not use WEEE as feedstock. In Alberta, eCycle Solutions and Quantum Lifecycle Partners LP perform the former, while various companies all over the world including North America (Envirometal Technologies Inc. in Canada, Metallix Refining Inc. in the US), Europe (Boliden AB in Sweden, Umicore NV in Belgium), and Asia (DOWA Holdings Co., Ltd. and Tanaka Precious Metals in Japan) perform the latter.
Market Value
The global REE market is valued at USD 5.3 billion in 2021 and is projected to grow to 9.6 Billion by 2026 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.33%. APAC is the largest producer and consumer of rare-earth metals across the globe, with almost all major manufacturers and end-use companies present in the region. APAC has witnessed tremendous growth in the past few years, driven by the growing population, favorable investment policies, growing economies, and government initiatives directed at promoting electronics and automobile industries in the region.
Identification of Market Gaps
Domestic rare earth element (REE) insecurity underpins regional regulatory requirements due to the lack of access to REE supply as less than 3 companies make up for 90% of the world's REEs. This makes REE prices extremely volatile, and their ubiquity in modern electronic devices as magnets and in industry as catalysts means that consumers may experience the ripple effects of product price fluctuations. Given this virtual monopoly that may be aggravated by geopolitical tensions, nations are looking towards securing domestic REE supply by leveraging existing sustainability goals by initiating the transition towards a circular economy i.e. using untapped secondary sources of materials such as WEEE.
For upstream WEEE processing, our product provides an avenue through which WEEE dismantlers can perform their own critical materials recovery in-house. Currently, WEEE dismantlers outsource such processes to downstream smelters or metal extracting plants, and the logistic expenses this incurs have been reported to be the second highest expense allocation, after employee salary. Thus, if critical materials recovery can be performed locally, such companies have the potential to widen their profit margin.
Although there are current existing operations to perform critical materials recovery from WEEE, such processes either perform pyrometallurgy (using high temperatures to extract the metals), hydrometallurgy (using large volumes of strong acids to leach the metals), or a combination of both - all of which entail detrimental environmental impacts which defeat the ultimate purpose of sustainable self-sufficiency. Hence, companies that perform critical materials recovery from WEEE are incentivized to adopt sustainable yet economically feasible processes. Since this process occupies such a specialized niche, there are not a lot of existing competitors for our primary target market.
Therefore, our proposed biological solution proves to be attractive to our prospective customers due to its a) potential for allowing them to secure cutting-edge and effective technology, as the critical materials recovery industry is anticipated to grow in the coming years due to the trend in the adoption of a circular economy, and b) inherent sustainability owing to the solution’s biological nature.
Competitors
The current WEEE recycling pipeline does not have robust solutions implemented for extraction of REE from mixtures of metals. Conventional metal extraction methods from WEEE include hydrometallurgy, which uses high volumes of strong acids, and pyrometallurgy, which uses high temperature to extract metals. However, these have detrimental environmental impacts, posing a major problem that needs to be addressed in our transition to a circular economy. In addition to having detrimental environmental impacts, these methods are not selective to any particular metals and thus does not recover REEs effectively, resulting in a dependency on mining as a source of REEs. In addition to a highly monopolistic and unstable supply chain, the main sources of REEs are only found within a few ore mines resulting in a growing demand for alternative sources. While the market for separation and processing of REE is not new and untapped, there are currently only 8 companies globally that focus on REE separation as listed: Boliden Ltd. (Sweden), Umicore (Belgium), AMR Technologies Inc.(Canada), Baotou HEFA Rare Earth (China), Rhodia Electronics and Catalysts (France), Grace Davison (USA), Santoku America Inc (USA) and Dowa Holdings (Japan). Among these companies, the main method of REE extraction is through chemical separation processes such as solvent extraction and ion exchange which are reagent expensive processes. Thus our proposed solution to the separation process through protein based separation would not only be more efficient, but also less expensive when compared to the status quo.
Key stakeholders
We hope to partner up with local and global e-waste recycling companies and facilities who are mainly involved in the initial processing of e-waste. These companies collect e-waste, physically sort it into different components and sell the sorted waste to a variety of different down-stream waste processing companies. We would be buying the sorted waste components such as grinded hard drives that contain a high concentration of REEs to use as a source of e-waste for our refinement technology.
With regards to validating the problem at hand, our team has dedicated an entire subgroup towards networking, interviewing, and ideating with target customers. This has involved communicating with multiple waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) recycling facilities to learn more about their current workflow as well as their existing strengths and limitations. Through discussions with local WEEE facilities, namely eCycle solutions from Airdrie, Alberta and Quantum Lifecycle Partners LP from Edmonton, Alberta, we have learned about some of the gaps in the market and issues faced by recycling organizations. For one, it has become apparent that much of the REE downstream processing has to be outsourced and requires far more steps than one would anticipate. On a similar vein, much of the infrastructural cost burdens of WEEE recycling facilities comes from transportational and organizational fees associated with moving processed WEEE to other locations. Keeping this all in mind, the implementation of our solution would not only introduce a novel supply chain to the market, but it would provide the REE recovery pipeline with a sustainable, economic alternative to existing processes. As such, WEEE recycling companies such as eCycle Solutions and Quantum Lifecycle Partners LP could send their processed WEEE to facilities that utilize our biological solution that includes both the recovery and extraction of REEs. This eliminates the need for extensive downstream transfers of materials, which would save both costs and time. Our team plans to continue contacting downstream facilities and recycling companies to further validate issues in the market and how our solution would best fit into the current recycling pipeline.
Value Proposition
Current REE extraction practices rely on complex chemical steps which are expensive and environmentally detrimental, making the mining of these elements incredibly unsustainable. This, combined with the monopolistic and volatile nature of the current REE market, highlights the potential of Neocycle, an environmentally friendly and novel biological approach for extracting REEs. With the use of a high-affinity REE-binding protein, lanmodulin, our system can selectively purify REEs in a single step with up to 99% purity. Neocycle’s comparatively simple nature allows for a more sustainable and economical approach to REE recycling, helping in our mission to pave a new and sustainable supply chain to better suppose future REE needs.
The production of Lanmodulin, our lanthanide binding protein, and the designing of an absorber column in which to contain Lanmodulin is a complex task with a high threshold of expertise, increasing the barrier of entry into this space through research and development costs. By being the first to develop this type of product we aim to leverage our first installations as proof of the viability of our system and market ourselves as the most mature version of this system on the market. This way if others do attempt to emulate our system, we still maintain an advantage in our experience as pioneers of this type of application.
Canvas Model
Figure 2. Neocycle Canvas Model.
Identification of Customers
We hope to sell our technology and services to companies involved with REE refining and processing. These companies already have interest and facilities in place to refine and separate out REEs. We hope that they would use our technology and customer relationships to add an e-waste recycling stream to their processes.
By reaching out to recycling plants we aim to offer them a workflow for recovering rare earth elements from the WEEE already running through their facilities, giving them a new revenue stream. The main draw to incorporating our workflow is the ability to reduce landfilled material while increasing revenues. Due to the currently highly monopolistic sources of rare earth elements, we believe that customers would be open-minded to the introduction of our new and sustainable supply chain of REEs. We would hope to start on a local scale, by introducing our ideas to companies (such as eCycle Solutions and Quantum Lifecycle Partners LP) who we have already established connections with. Then, we would utilize their feedback to improve upon our model as we begin to circulate our solution on a larger scale. Our ultimate goal would be to become a “household” name in the REE recycling pipeline.
Figure 3. Neocycle SWOT Analysis.
While there are a myriad of uncertain factors that can come into production, the provision of an estimate of the capital and operating expenditures allows for a rough evaluation of the economic feasibility of the solution at hand. Find below the estimated cost of running our enterprise per year.
Patents provide protection to the intellectual property of innovators and inventors. However, patents pose a stumbling to most businesses because use of a patented technology requires licensing negotiations. Furthermore, filing patents for novel technologies that are composed of patented technology requires extremely complex legal analysis by patent lawyers. Given that this is a threat to our enterprise and that there is potential for patent applications, we reached out to stakeholders who might be able to provide insight.
We met with patent lawyers from Smart & Biggar LLP to discuss the degree to which a pending patent application might affect the development of our technology. They said that even though the patent application is still underway, the assignees still have provisional rights over the claims in the patent. They suggested that we should negotiate licensing with the assignees to the patent covering lanmodulin and associated technologies later on in the design process to ensure that we are not overstepping any intellectual property claims.
We also met with Daria Venkova, the Co-founder of Purley A&D Consulting , to know the potential for us to patent Neocycle as its own technology. She suggested that we should figure out which part of our technology is patentable and novel since the value of the enterprise increases dramatically if we patented our technology. In connection with this, she posited the possibility of another business model: negotiating licenses to well-established companies instead , or the commercialization of the intellectual property, instead of handling the actual operation and maintenance.
Finally, we met with Innovate Calgary , an innovation transfer and business incubator at the University of Calgary to talk about the degree to which the lanmodulin patent would affect our technology development. We were informed that although it is a threat later on, this should not stifle current business and technology development.
With this, we proceeded with the business incubation process to translate our enterprise into a legitimate business.
As young entrepreneurs, we felt the need to get involved in a variety of activities targeted towards helping us learn more about businesses, start-ups, and bioentrepreneurship. As such, we sought out pitching competitions, start-up consultants, and business incubation programs to build up our entrepreneurial thinking skills.
University of Calgary Launchpad Program
Launchpad is a competitive, six-month program offered by the University of Calgary that allows participants to build entrepreneurial thinking skills. We attend a series of weekly presentations and participate in workshops to develop our business skills and learn what it takes to be a successful start-up in our respective industry. In addition, each team is assigned a dedicated coach to help us navigate our entrepreneurial journey while also receiving up to $1000 CAD for project funding. Finally, we plan to participate in a final pitching competition, Liftoff, in order to showcase our project and the skills we gained throughout the Launchpad program.
Innovate Calgary
Innovate Calgary is an innovation transfer and business incubator at the University of Calgary. Our partnership with them provides us with access to a multitude of resources, experts, and connections that will help get our business ideas off the ground. Our primary contact, Anthony Wigglesworth, is the Associate Director of the Technology Transfer Office and he has played a crucial role in helping us begin to navigate the industrial implementation of our technology. Additionally, through discussions with Anthony and Jelena Matic (Senior Innovation Manager of Science & Engineering and CFREF Commercialization Advisor), Innovate Calgary has given us support regarding Intellectual Property and company formation.
Robert Mayall - CTO & Founder at FREDsense Technologies
In order to learn more about how an iGEM project could transition into a start-up we met with Dr. Mayall, the CTO & Founder at FREDsense Technologies. After a successful iGEM project in 2012 Dr. Mayall took his ideas beyond the scope of an iGEM project into a successful and growing start-up today. Dr. Mayall highlighted effective communication as one of the keys to successfully launching a start-up. He gave us insight into how his company pitches their ideas to potential investors and how they navigate a meeting with their customers. He suggested being concise and focusing on the immediate and long term benefits that our technology would bring to the customers which would allow us to keep the audience engaged while highlighting the competitive advantage of our product. Dr. Mayall’s mentorship and guidance will prove extremely valuable as we move toward taking part in pitch competitions and presenting our technology to the world.
Daria Venkova - Co-founder and CEO of Purley A&D Consulting
To determine the next concrete steps in taking our enterprise from bench to business, we talked with Daria Venkova to learn more about how we can leverage available opportunities for startups. She mentioned that a plethora of programs and organizations provide ample opportunities for young businesses like ours. We were informed that a microvoucher grant from Alberta Innovates $10000 may be used for patenting the technology. We also learned that involving governing bodies, since our project deals with a regulatory entity, by making them shareholders or giving them access to the technology for life as long as they assist us in funding in the initial stages of our business.
Pitching Competitions Applications
We applied to the Mayor’s Innovation Challenge by the City of Calgary which was aimed to innovators for them to share their ideas to make our community more resilient. We also applied to Inventure, which is designs to be a platform for entrepreneurs, budding businesses and enterprises as a one-stop shop to discover potential investment opportunities.
Currently, we have been networking with other recycling companies in Canada and internationally to see if this idea is feasible and if companies would be interested. We have also been working on commercializing our product for industrial application and better understanding the recycling pipeline to make improvements to our product. So far, the public perception of our solution has been positive, we’ve received feedback from many stakeholders through interviews with WEEE processors, pitching events, and other networking opportunities.
With regards to the future, we are optimistic about the commercialization trajectory of our project given the current landscape of securing domestic REE supply in the face of growing technological demand and geopolitical tensions.
