Metal Recycling : Royal Mint turns prison workshops into a domestic precious metal recycling route

For an industry that increasingly measures its worth by how much value it can keep in circulation rather than how much it can move to landfill, the latest tie-up out of South Wales is one to watch. The Royal Mint has partnered with Recycling Lives Services to recover gold and precious metals from UK electronic waste, creating employment and skills development opportunities for prisoners in supervised work programmes.

Through its precious metals recovery business, Reformation Metals, The Royal Mint is now receiving circuit boards from end-of-life televisions collected at civic amenity sites across the country. The e-waste is dismantled manually at Recycling Lives’ Preston facility and through workshops before being transferred to The Royal Mint for gold and other precious metal extraction, keeping valuable materials within the UK economy.

Sean Millard, Chief Growth Officer at The Royal Mint, framed the arrangement as central to the Mint’s recovery operation: “Recycling Lives plays a vital role in supporting our precious metals recovery work. We’re proud to work with such a specialised recycling business. Their feedstock has enabled us to continue sourcing high-quality precious metals from e-waste across the UK, while their social impact model adds further value to a partnership advancing a more circular economy.”

The Royal Mint’s Reformation Metals facility in Llantrisant, south Wales forms part of the 1,100-year-old organisation’s long-term strategy to diversify into sustainable precious metals innovation. By extracting metals such as gold, silver and platinum group elements from electronic waste, The Royal Mint is helping to reduce reliance on traditional mining methods and strengthen domestic supply chains aligned with the UK Critical Minerals Strategy.

Taken together, the partnership demonstrates The Royal Mint’s ambition to provide a more sustainable, domestic solution to tackling e-waste, whilst supporting a more resilient UK supply chain.

For the prisoners involved, the workshops offer far more than meaningful work, they provide a pathway to rebuild confidence and develop transferable skills.

Adrian Murphy, Chief Executive Officer at Recycling Lives Services, said: “By working with The Royal Mint’s Reformation Metals team, Recycling Lives Services is recovering valuable materials from UK e-waste while supporting a rehabilitation model that creates practical routes towards employment for prisoners preparing for release. The Royal Mint’s commitment to ethical precious metals recovery helps make that model possible, connecting circular economy innovation with meaningful second chances.”

Recycling Lives Services provides nationwide recycling and waste management solutions for businesses across the UK, combining commercial recycling operations with a social impact model that supports rehabilitation and employment opportunities for people facing barriers to work. Through its national infrastructure, the company achieves high levels of landfill diversion while delivering transparent reporting and compliance support for customers across sectors including infrastructure, utilities, manufacturing, construction and retail.

Quality and provenance matter when reclaimed material is destined for a mint. Each batch of circuit boards is carefully graded, itemised and verified by Recycling Lives prior to dispatch, ensuring full traceability and the consistent material quality required for precious metal recovery and recycling at The Royal Mint’s facility — a level of rigour that turns a stream of discarded televisions into a dependable domestic source of high-value metals.