When it comes to recycling, few materials can match aluminum. It can be reused countless times and is often cheaper to recycle than to produce new aluminum because it requires much less energy. However, only approx a third of aluminum used in the US is recycled.
The problem lies in sorting the mixed aluminum waste – a challenge that has long sidelined the recycling industry.
Michael Siemer, its CEO Sorterabut he believes his company has found the key. Sortera says it has developed a system that can separate aluminum grades with more than 95% accuracy – a breakthrough that could unlock a huge untapped resource in the recycling industry.
Here’s how it works: The company uses an AI model that identifies different grades of aluminum based on data from lasers, X-ray fluorescence and high-speed cameras. The system must sort each chip – about the size of a large potato chip – in a fraction of a second. “Ten milliseconds is a long time,” says Siemer. Once the vision system determines the grade, a series of nozzles blow precise puffs of air to flip the chip off the belt and into the correct bin.
This speed and accuracy is important because other recycling operations must first melt the aluminum before they can tell what type of alloy it is. And if the alloys aren’t graded correctly, the mixed pile is worth much less because customers can’t be sure it will have the properties they need.
“People wanted to continue [this unsorted aluminum]and no one has been able to unlock it,” says Siemer.
Sortera’s sorting accuracy further helped the company unlock something else many startups are looking for: profitability. “Margin is exponential over 90%, [while] 92% gives you a nice little margin, 95% gives you a big margin, [and] 98% is a really big margin.”
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That helped the company become cash-flow positive as of August, he says, all based on operating a single plant in Indiana. To build a second plant in Tennessee, Sortera recently raised $20 million in equity and $25 million in debt in a round led by VXI Capital and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price, with participation from Overlay Capital and Yamaha Motor Ventures, the company told TechCrunch exclusively. Trinity Capital provides additional equipment financing.
The new plant, which is being built near Nashville, will come online in April or May. “It’s a replica of our plant in Indiana,” says Siemer. At the Indiana facility, he says, “we’re running full-tilt, 24-7, and we’re running millions of pounds a month.”
So where does all that aluminum come from? The aluminum scrap that Sortera receives tends to come from cut-up cars. Each grade of aluminum breaks differently when sliced, and these visual differences help AI sort the metal. “Chemical differences manifest themselves in fragmentation,” says Siemer. Different alloys produce distinctive tears and creases that give clues to the system. “You get these little bits of knowledge so that in about 10 milliseconds of time, you say, ‘I’m pretty sure it’s 356 [grade aluminum]says Siemer.
As Sortera expands, much of its aluminum will likely end up back on auto assembly lines. Automakers are using increasing amounts of metal to reduce vehicle weight and improve fuel efficiency. “Every car manufacturer on the planet has been to Indiana at least twice,” says Siemer.
Sortera is currently working on ways to process other metals such as copper and titanium, but for the near future, the company remains focused on aluminum. “We could immediately sort the 18 billion tons of aluminum produced annually in the U.S. Every bit of it, every pound would be sold at a profit in the U.S.”
