A partnership between the Royal Mint and clean-tech business Excir is a win for both sides – and for the planet.
Venerable institutions are commonly imagined to be slow to change and prone to clinging to the past.
But the Royal Mint – at 1100 years old, one of the most venerable in the UK – is challenging this narrative with a fast-moving and comprehensive programme of reinvention and innovation. Earlier this year, it opened a new precious metals recovery facility in Wales, using technology from Canadian company Excir to extract gold from electronic waste, for use in the 886 by The Royal Mint jewellery collection.
Royal Mint chairman Graham Love and Oxford Saïd alumnus Aaron Logan, CEO of Excir, join Associate Dean Kathy Harvey to discuss this unexpected partnership between a clean-tech start-up and a historic coin-maker. They also welcome Charlotte Bromwell, Product Manager, 886 by The Royal Mint, who introduces their exclusive new jewellery collection for Oxford Saïd.
Necessity and ambition
There has been rapid decrease in the number of payments using cash in recent years, accelerated by the Covid pandemic. As recently as 2018, the Royal Mint was doing between 200 and 250 million pounds’ worth of business producing coins for the UK; last year it was eight million. With its core business in catastrophic decline, the Royal Mint has built a number of new businesses alongside it. E-waste is not the only one, but it is at the heart of achieving the organisation’s sustainability ambitions.
The need to scale
The technology developed by Excir is highly sophisticated (other technology in the field is much cruder) but needed to be commercialised and scaled up to be used effectively. Excir did not have the capacity to do this alone (Logan dismisses the idea of attempting it as ‘the hubris approach’) but the Royal Mint had the capability, the space, the skills with precious metals, the manufacturing experience, and the human and financial capital. So, with ‘burning platforms on both sides’ a ‘win–win’ partnership was created.
The opportunity to reskill and create new jobs
The Government, which wholly owns the Royal Mint, understandably wishes to maintain the capability to manufacture coins, although the demand is likely to remain much reduced. The e-waste processing factory and the jewellery business provide opportunities to reskill people, saving jobs and creating new ones, which benefit the local community in South Wales. The Royal Mint and Excir also plan to scale further and are looking for partners worldwide.
