Umicore Introduces CTO Geert Olbrechts, Outlining Recycling and Advanced Materials Focus

Umicore has introduced Geert Olbrechts, its Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President Recycling, who outlines the company's focus on recycling, advanced materials and low-carbon technologies. He highlights the Precious Metals Refining site in Hoboken, Belgium, which can treat more than 200 complex material streams and recover 17 valuable metals within a single integrated system. The company is steering its resources through its CORE 2028 strategy.

Key facts

Market context

Umicore is a materials technology and recycling group whose operations span precious metals, battery materials and catalysts. Recycling of end-of-life material is an increasingly important source of metals such as cobalt, nickel, lithium, platinum-group metals and silver, which are used in rechargeable batteries, fuel cells, catalysts and electronics. Demand for these materials is closely tied to electric vehicles, energy storage, hydrogen equipment and renewable power generation, including wind turbines and solar panels. Recovering metals from complex scrap through integrated refining can supply part of that demand without new mining, which tends to ease pressure on primary supply and can influence the relative economics of recycled versus mined feedstock. For buyers and investors, the key variables are the range of feedstock a recycler can process, the number of metals it can recover from each stream, and how refining capacity keeps pace with the energy transition.

Source: official release on umicore.com. Summary and context written by Market Krystal.