Metal resources such as aluminum, copper, and precious metals contained in used products like automobiles, home appliances, and electronic printed circuit boards are called as aboveground resources, which are not only valuable resources for resources-poor Japan, but recycling and reusing these metals is an effective solution to various environmental problems caused by natural resources mining. With our corporate mission of “Create systems that leads to the better future,” we are continuously working to build circular economy by making full use of the global network and infrastructure of the Mitsui & Co. Group and by working together with our business partners around the world through to create values for aboveground resources and execute metal recycling businesses.
Products
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Aluminium scrap and Secondary aluminium alloys
Secondary aluminium alloys are recycled ingots produced by melting aluminium scrap. This energy required for aluminium recycling is only 3% compared to the energy in producing Primary aluminium alloys from bauxite, thus Secondary aluminium alloys is an excellent product with a low environmental burden that contributes to CO2 reduction. In Japan, a sorting system for recycling aluminium scrap has been established, and with the recent increase in environmental awareness, Aluminium scrap and Secondary aluminium alloys are getting more attentive. We handle a wide range of aluminium products from these raw materials to products, and provide various values to customers through the aluminium recycling.
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Copper scrap
Copper is a metal with high electrical and thermal conductivity and corrosion resistance. Due to its characteristics, copper is widely used in our daily lives, such as electric wires, air conditioners, electronic components, and faucet fittings. Nowadays, a lot of copper scrap collected from such end-of-life products is willingly recycled due to its high value and low environmental burden in recycling process. We handle various types of recycling copper raw materials such as Candy, Birch Cliff and Cobra etc from around the world by making full use of the Mitsui & Co. Group’s network and build circular economy through the copper scrap business.
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PCB-scrap
Printed Circuit Boards (PCB) are essential component for modern electronic devices such as mobile-phones and PCs. Since PCB-scraps contains precious and rare metals such as gold, silver, copper, platinum and palladium, it is called “Urban Mine” (aboveground resources), and is attracting attention as a recycling raw material. PCB-scraps collected from used electric products is melted and recycled at non-ferrous smelters in Japan and overseas. We are working to build circular economy though collecting and recycling PCB-scraps by using Mitsui & Co. Group’s global network from all over the world.
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Magnesium and Silicon metal
Magnesium is described as a combination of metal and beauty in Chinese character, and it looks beautiful and is the lightest metal used in daily life use. Magnesium metal is mainly used as an additive material for aluminium alloys(ex. aluminium cans, extrusion, etc.) and reducing agents, and Magnesium alloys, which are easy to recycle, are used in automobile parts, wheels and electronic devices for the purpose of weight saving.
Silicon metal is used as an auxiliary material in the production of secondary aluminum alloys, and as a raw material for organic silicon and high-purity semiconductor materials, and special-purpose silicon alloy. Most of these Magnesium and Silicon metals are produced in China and we supply to customers not only in Japan but also around the world in working together with the Mitsui & Co. Group.