DEScycle has entered into a strategic partnership with Mitsubishi Corporation to pursue metals recovery opportunities from electronic waste in Japan, extending a relationship that began with Mitsubishi Corporation’s investment in the business in 2025.
Under the agreement, the two companies have selected each other as preferred partners for the Japanese market and will work together on business development focused on the recovery and processing of metals from e-waste. The partnership combines DEScycle’s ionometallurgy-based processing platform with Mitsubishi Corporation’s customer relationships, trading reach, and market access.
The agreement comes as manufacturers face rising demand for critical and strategic minerals driven by electrification, AI, and advanced manufacturing, while pressure grows to expand metals recovery capacity without the capital intensity of conventional smelting. DEScycle said its platform, based on deep eutectic solvent chemistry, is designed to recover metals from e-scrap with lower energy use and environmental impact than incumbent routes.
Mitsubishi Corporation is expected to support marketing activity for critical and precious metals recovered using DEScycle’s process through its global trading platform and customer network. It will also explore expansion opportunities using its investment capability as DEScycle develops further projects.
DEScycle is currently building a demonstration plant in the UK with support from Mitsubishi Corporation, which the companies intend to use as a reference point for future deployments as the platform scales. The model is centred on distributed facilities designed to process secondary resources closer to source, rather than relying on large-scale smelting infrastructure.
Fred White, Co-founder and CCO at DEScycle, said: “Partnering with Mitsubishi enables us to explore opportunities to deploy our platform in Japan, which is known for being a global leader in e-waste recycling.”
He added that the company is also targeting expansion in the UK, the US, and Europe through repeatable deployments intended to recover critical materials from above-ground resources and support more localised supply chains.
For Mitsubishi Corporation, the Japanese market is the immediate focus. Toshihiko Satomi, Senior Vice President, General Manager, Mineral Resources Group CEO office, Mitsubishi Corporation, said: “DEScycle’s technology has great potential in the Japanese market to advance resource circulation and sustainable metals recovery, and we view this partnership as an important step in exploring its application in Japan.”
The partnership places Japan at the centre of DEScycle’s next commercial phase, as pressure builds on manufacturers and resource users to secure more resilient, domestic sources of strategic metals.
