Nord Engineering SpA, a Cuneo-based company that designs and builds smart systems for the collection of municipal waste, has acquired 60 percent of Arezzo-based BTT Italia Srl, part of the LEM Industries SpA and TCB group that designs and builds plants for the recovery and refining of precious metals from WEEE. The closing was signed in November, following an industrial partnership that began in 2023 to design a container for the collection of waste electrical and electronic equipment. With the acquisition, Nord Engineering and BTT Italia preside over the beginning and end of the WEEE recovery and treatment value chain: with Nord Engineering's container, precious metals found in WEEE such as gold, platinum, palladium, silver, and copper are collected, and with facilities such as “Hydro B One”, refined. BTT Italia, in fact, maintains its presence in the market and continues to build plants such as the “Hydro B One” in Terranuova Bracciolini, Tuscany, operated as of Dec. 20 by Iren SpA.
THE TWO COMPANIES, MARKET VALUES AND EXPECTED VALUES
BTT Italia, in Marciano della Chiana (AR) has been designing and implementing processes and plants for the recovery and refining of precious metals since 1979. It has developed an important know-how in tailor-made, high-performance, safe and stable solutions for the goldsmith industry, mining and WEEE recovery. BTT Italia introduced the first rotary reactors and, today, holds the technology based on hydrometallurgical processes to recover and refine precious metals with very low CO2 emissions into the atmosphere.
Nord Engineering (Caraglio, CN), which has been in the market for 20 years, is among the leading companies in the smart waste management sector. Its products are sold in some 20 countries around the world. Nord Engineering has developed the innovative Easy Collection System, an automatic single-operator bilateral equipment capable of collecting different types of containers.
As the Sustainable Development Foundation recalls in its report “Recycling in Italy 2024,” the WEEE collection rate for 2023 stands at 30 percent; still decreasing as in previous years and far from the 65 percent that the European Union has set as a target in 2019. In detail, according to data from the WEEE Collection Center, 349,345 tons were collected in Italy in 2023, a change of -3.1% compared to 2022. In addition, the Critical Raw Materials Act (EU Regulation 2024/1252), which came into force last May, added as a goal between now and 2030 to increase the recycling of critical raw materials to enable coverage of at least 25 percent of their consumption in the European Union. With eight plants with hydrometallurgical technology by 2040 (according to an estimate by The European House - Ambrosetti for Iren), to which a capillary network of urban containers for WEEE would be combined, the amount of precious metals that would be refined would correspond to the maximum of what is recoverable out of the total waste collected; with a total value of gold refined estimated at around 130 mln euros (at current values).
Malachy Musso, CEO Nord Engineering: “With this acquisition, the ‘urban mining’ supply chain is serving strategic sectors of the made-in-Italy industry. The current management of WEEE, in fact, starts in a way that is often ineffective due to a still poor awareness of its proper disposal. In addition, a very high share of this waste goes abroad, about 90 percent. When we announced the industrial partnership between us and BTT Italy at the end of last year, we were very clear that we needed to make it easier for citizens to deliver WEEE and recover its precious metals in an environmentally sustainable way. Now we are starting to actively contribute to reduce the dependence on foreign precious and strategic metals for chip production, automotive, defense and aerospace.”
Daniele Gualdani, LEM Industries: “This operation rewards the last five years of research and development in which BTT Italia has believed and invested resources, about 30 percent of its turnover. Technology and innovative processes in the gold sector are our story; now they take us a leap forward in the circular economy and environmental sustainability of which we are proud and which we put at the service of the country system. At the same time, BTT Italia and Nord Engineering are two companies with strong territorial roots and a great international vocation. The new ownership structure nothing changes in terms of employment and instead opens up a lot in terms of opportunities for both.”
Lucia Leonessi, Director General of Confindustria Cisambiente: “I am very pleased with this new acquisition, because it actually creates a pole of great importance. This is a point of arrival for Nord Engineering and BTT Italia: I wish them good work and a fruitful path in which the Confindustria Cisambiente Association will always be at their side and that of Italian companies in the Environment sector.”
OPERATION OF TECHNOLOGICAL LEADERSHIP AND PROCESS KNOW-HOW
With Nord Engineering's entry into the capital of BTT Italia, a technological leadership in the circular economy sector and know-how of processes for refining metals, rare earths and strategic materials is given substance. Central theme is to process strategic raw materials in an economically sustainable way with reduced environmental impact. The more you recycle what you buy and use, the less you need to extract raw materials. So less impact on soil and water (mining) and less pollution in the atmosphere (pyrometallurgical recycling processes). BTT Italia operates with a patented hydrometallurgical technology that does not use smelting and combustion and therefore has reduced CO2 emissions (about 80 percent less than pyrometallurgical processes).
DEVELOPMENT AND SYNERGY IN INTERNATIONAL MARKETS
Both companies preside over international markets and with this transaction bring together business management, international sales network and foreign offices in Spain, France, South America. This new corporate structure allows them to tackle even larger orders. Each city that gets Nord Engineering's bins could have a “Hydro B Two” plant (and then a Hydro B Three, and so on) in a year's time for refining metals from WEEE. The plant is modular and covers different sizes of cities or geographical areas. Development also comes from “newly founded cities” such as Neom in Saudi Arabia or the new Samarkand in Uzbekistan. Places that immediately integrate urban mining and related logistics into the architectural, engineering and urban design, along with aqueducts and sewers.
BTT ITALIA: AFTER THE FIRST 45 YEARS, GUIDELINES FOR FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
BTT Italia celebrated its first 45 years in business this year. In the previous 40 years, the company was involved in the construction of plants for the refining of precious metals. In the last five years, the experience gained has been invested in the development of solutions for the recovery of precious metals and critical in the circular economy. In 2024, BTT Italia built the first hi-tech hydrometallurgical plant, the ‘Hydro B One’ in Tuscany, which reduces mining and maximises the recovery of strategic raw materials from WEEE, without incineration processes.
For the coming years, BTT Italia presents its 12 development guidelines on circular economy issues. These guidelines are intended to offer an industrial, concrete, and feasible vision and perspective for sustainable processes and high-performance plants which, in addition to the recovery of precious metals from WEEE, will extend to the sectors of deep sea mining, coal and asbestos recovery, and the treatment of two strategic elements such as germanium and bismuth. In addition, BTT Italia will focus on the treatment of phosphorous dust from fluorescent lamps to recover the rare earths present, as well as in NiMH batteries, or silver from decommissioned photovoltaic panels. Other frontiers are the radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology supply chain, the space industry and the gold hidden in mines, i.e. strategic minerals such as gallium, cobalt and feldspar, among others.
