The Royal Mint has opened a factory at a site in south Wales, which will be tasked with extracting gold from e-waste for reuse.

Gold is often used in electronics due to its excellent conductive properties and resistance to corrosion. But MPs on the Environmental Audit Committee recently warned that the government had made little progress on improving recycling rates as the UK’s e-waste piles up.

The Royal Mint said its new factory would be able to process up to 4,000 tonnes of printed circuit boards (PCBs) from e-waste and the recovered gold will encourage more sustainable industry practices. Annually, this could amount to hundreds of kilograms, which it will use in its luxury jewellery range.

The 3,700 sq m facility uses a new chemistry process from Canadian clean tech company Excir that can easily extract gold from PCBs found in everyday items, such as TVs, laptops and mobile phones, in minutes. The process also works at room temperature, which makes the gold recovery more energy efficient...