Recycling, Orim recovers critical raw materials in Macerata

An urban mine, a valuable energy infrastructure in Macerata. The only plant in Italia capable of combining thermal and hydrometallurgical processes for the recovery of metals present in waste that, until a few years ago, ended up in landfills and that today, instead, Europe considers Crm (critical raw materials), i.e., critical: vanadium, copper, silver, platinum, tin, nickel, cobalt, molybdenum, to name but the most important. It is Italy's answer to European dependence on China and other non-EU countries. "Talking about Orim today means telling how Europe can be able to turn waste into strategic independence," says Alfredo Mancini, who founded the company in February 1982, after an 11-year experience in Montedison and seven months before the issue of Presidential Decree 915, the first Italian regulation dedicated to the environment and waste disposal in particular.

The first studies, in collaboration with the University of L'Aquila (which led to two patents) and with the Sapienza University in Rome, to carry out at Orim the activity of recovering waste that at the time only about twenty companies in the world were able to process. Then came the turning point, in June 2024, with the entry of the Xenon fund, which acquired 70% of the company with 12 million: an injection of fresh capital that gave the go-ahead for the company's plant upgrading.

The jewel is a state-of-the-art EUR 10.5 million plant (EUR 7.1 million of which is guaranteed by another Fund intervention) capable of recovering both catalysts from the chemical and petrochemical industries and other types of waste that may contain metals. It consists of three rotary kilns with a capacity of up to 1,450 kg/h of waste and eight reactors, each with a capacity of 8,000 litres, to be used for the production of very high purity salts, consisting mainly of the metals present in the treated waste.

"The metals, once treated, return to the production cycle at our customers' premises," Mancini emphasises, "because Orim's products are both in the form of salts and in the solid form of single metal. The one in Macerata is also the first pilot plant in Europe on an industrial scale that, thanks to funding from Brussels with the Life Graphirec project, recycles graphite from lithium battery production waste. An expansion that will result in the hiring of an additional 20 employees, to which a further 15 will be added for commercial and administrative support activities.

Orim's is a significant contribution to the circular economy, given that the production cycles are practically infinite, as they do not only end up in the metallurgical sector, but can go back to the production of new catalysts or finalised for the use of innovative technologies, such as for vanadium recovered in the form of salt, which can be used again for the production of batteries for the electric automotive sector, or in lesser-known areas such as the agricultural sector, as molybdenum salts favour fruit production. Not to mention that recovery from waste can reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions by up to 90% compared to mining.