As per the International Energy Agency (IEA), demand for copper, needed for the transition to a low-carbon world, will outstrip supply within the next decade. Supplies of the metal, a key component of every form of electrical energy system at present, will fall 30% short of the amount required by 2035 if nothing is done, the global body predicted.
Since copper will have a skyrocketing demand, so will its prices, given the fact that in order to completely transition away from fossil fuels, the global economy will require twice as much copper in the coming years as humanity has mined throughout all of its existence.
In light of the aforementioned context, International Finance will examine Still Bright, a venture based in New Jersey that was founded in 2022. The company claims to have discovered a novel and cleaner method to significantly reduce costs.
What is the start-up up to?
Still Bright has developed a new way to extract copper, which can recover nearly all the copper from typical ores without pre-processing steps that lose up to 20% of the metal. It’s effective enough that it could even be used on tailings, the discard piles that still contain smaller amounts of the metal that mines leave behind.
“Any copper that was lost as waste, we can actually process that and get the copper back,” Allen said.
The start-up recently raised a USD 18.7 million seed round led by Material Impact and Breakthrough Energy Ventures, with additional participation from Azolla Ventures, Fortescue, Impact Science Ventures, and SOSV. This investment will be used to boost production from single digits to hundreds of tons per year.
Copper is a critical material for electronics, transmission, construction, and other industries that underpin the 21st-century economic infrastructure—and its demand is projected to increase by 100% in the next ten years. Despite the presence of enough copper in the ground to satisfy this growth, multi-decade permitting timelines, geopolitical risk, declining ore quality, and environmental issues will threaten to cause major shortages and disrupt the copper supply chain when it’s needed the most.
The only way forward is to get more copper out of the ground as fast as possible. The future of copper needs to be safer and easier to permit, more efficient, and more robust to process a wide range of copper sources. Still Bright is looking to address all of these challenges, apart from unlocking expanded copper resources previously considered unrecoverable.
The start-up’s 2025 pilot projects will focus on extracting copper from resources with limited processing options, including “dirty” copper concentrates and raw materials being exported for processing.
Meet The Tech
Bright’s RACER (rapid and complete electrochemical reduction) technology is known for streamlining permitting and unlocking the copper needed to create a robust domestic supply chain, and meet growing demand while providing significant cost savings.
The technology allows its users to extract copper without producing harmful pollution. Where most companies essentially burn away unwanted parts of the ore, releasing much of it into the atmosphere, Still Bright soaks copper-containing ores in a vanadium-based solution, which draws the metal out of the ore. When the vanadium solution is spent, the company’s system uses electricity to regenerate it.
The core technology was inspired by a type of long-duration energy storage known as a “vanadium flow battery.” Inside it, a vanadium-based solution that can be stored in large tanks gets charged and discharged by flowing it past a membrane. Bright’s copper extraction and RACER modules get customised to mine composition and throughput, while leveraging existing mine infrastructure.
Still Bright modules isolate solid copper and continuously recycle the extraction reagent. Sizing and downstream infrastructure may be customised to specific throughput and co-product requirements. The RACER modules are also compatible with a range of feedstocks from high-grade chalcopyrite to dirty and difficult copper ores.
The modular system will be able to be installed at mines spanning a range of sizes. Because the vanadium-based process works so quickly, the company’s equipment is much smaller than a typical refiner for the same amount of copper production.
In the words of CEO Randy Allen, Still Bright’s equipment is 70% to 90% cheaper than typical pyrometallurgical gear. Currently, the company’s process costs about the same to run as a typical refinery, but Allen expects that to change, towards the cheaper side.
Still Bright is planning to build a demonstration unit in 2027 or 2028 that’s capable of producing 500 tons of copper annually. Once completed, it will be a big leap from the current pilot-scale unit. The ultimate commercial-scale system will produce 10,000 tons per year.
RACER wants to become the world’s leading copper production process by outperforming traditional copper processing options and unlocking new sources of the chemical element. While the current copper supply chain ensures efficient copper recovery, it creates a high capital intensity and input sensitivity kind of situation, along with ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) challenges. RACER matches copper smelting’s efficiency with major cost reductions and environmental and permitting benefits.
The current copper supply chain often gets slowed by sulphur passivation, which is limited to low-grade copper oxides. Still Bright’s novel reduction avoids sulphur passivation, while recovering 90–99% copper in minutes. Another concern with the copper production process is that the copper is often considered too contaminated to economically or safely recover. It only results in expensive fees and/or poisonous emissions. The start-up addresses the concern by making the process a clean and closed one.
Also, copper production is infamous for its tremendous mine waste, which can’t be smelted or heap leached. Still Bright’s powerful reaction chemistry supports recovery from copper waste streams.
The Road Ahead
Talking about the United States alone, the world’s largest economy has at least 90 million tonnes of economically recoverable copper, but limited processing capacity. With only two operational smelters nationwide, Uncle Sam has been unable to process the copper that it mines.
As a result, American exports roughly constitute USD 3 billion of global raw copper flow annually, and on the other hand, it imports refined copper to meet growing demand. Despite its abundant domestic reserves, the US is the second-largest importer of foreign copper.
Through its extraction technology, Still Bright will be looking to end this reliance on imports, reducing unnecessary transport and supply chain risks. The start-up is also changing the equation on what is deemed economically recoverable, while preaching that by enabling difficult copper resources and streamlining permitting, the US will be able to shift to producing enough copper to meet its own demands and beyond.
And it wants to quickly start the process of refining copper in large enough quantities to benefit from any tariffs President Trump might impose on the metal’s imports. It will then use that revenue to develop and deploy commercial-scale units.