Australian metals recycling specialist Intec has teamed its technology with Hong Kong-based investors with the aim of boosting metalliferrous recycling projects in China.

Intec has signed a subscription agreement with Hong Kong-based Green Resources - a special purpose vehicle designed to implement primary and secondary resources projects using the Intec Process, combined with other advanced sustainable international technologies as appropriate, to exploit metalliferrous recycling opportunities in China. Several possibilities have already been identified and advanced through Intec’s representative office in the country.

Scheduled to commence operations in 2011, a project to treat blast furnace dust from Liugang Steel in Guangxi Province will be the largest commercial-scale application of the Intec Process to date. Initially, the venture will treat 50 000 tonnes per annum of furnace dusts containing 25% iron, 30% carbon, 7% zinc, 1.5% lead and 250 ppm indium. The treatment plant will produce high-purity zinc oxide, lead sulphide and indium metal for sale to external parties, along with high-purity hematite and carbon for sale to Liugang for reuse in its furnaces.

Once the plant is fully established, expansion of its throughput to 1 million tonnes per annum will be considered, in concert with the furnace dust production rates from Liugang.

Intec’s CEO Philip Wood comments: ‘China is a vast, highly-integrated and rapidly-growing economy with a well-established culture of recycling. New environmental standards are high, but there are many existing operations where environmental and economic performance can be substantially enhanced by recovery of metals and by-products through the recycling of solid and liquid waste streams using the proprietary Intec Process, which is extensively patented in China.’