Copper is a crucial element of the world’s green energy transition.
But with demand booming, the supply of copper is quickly dwindling, with the global industry now facing a looming crisis.
Copper demand around the world is expected to double by 2050, while the average mine grades have dropped by half over the last two decades.
There also hasn’t been a single significant copper discovery within 500m metres of the surface in more than a decade.
For the last 20 years, the team behind the NSW-based Loop Hydrometallurgy has been trying to find a way to unlock the wealth of stranded assets in existing areas and mines.
It has now found a solution with the Halion Loop, a breakthrough technology for the production of critical minerals.
“After 30 years of working in the space, we saw the answer that researchers globally had been looking for,” Loop Hydrometallurgy founder and managing director Dave Sammut said.
“It took us six weeks to build a prototype to test our idea, and in the first hour of its operation I knew we had done it. We had cracked the problem of how to recover or produce high purity copper directly from a salt water solution, cleanly and efficiently.
“After several more years of hard slog, and of dedication to an outcome that could change the world for the better, we’re now on the cusp of becoming an overnight success.”
This technology is an electrowinning cell which is the world’s first practical design for the direct recovery of copper from a concentrated halide solution.
Loop now believes its services can revolutionise the critical minerals sector, saving millions of tonnes of transport, gigawatts of power, kilotonnes of carbon and boosting Australia’s domestic production of the critical minerals crucial for the clean energy transition.
“For Australia, this represents a strategic domestic supply of metals that can support our own industries, reducing and eventually eliminating our reliance on foreign processing of our minerals,” Mr Sammut said.
“That means local value, local industry and local jobs. The key to our breakthrough is our revolutionary new form of electrowinning cell, which reduces the power consumption of copper recovery by up to 70 percent compared to conventional approaches.”
Loop Hydrometallurgy is a finalist in the InnovationAus 2025 Awards for Excellence in the Energy and Renewables category. The InnovationAus 2025 Awards for Excellence winners and finalists will be celebrated at a black-tie gala dinner at Sydney Town Hall on Thursday, November 27. You can book your tickets here.
The Energy and Renewables Award is proudly sponsored by the University of NSW. The category rewards ambition and innovation in renewable energy, recycling and the circular economy sectors, spanning everything from hydrogen extraction technologies to innovations in re-manufacturing.
A recent study at a “stranded” site previously uneconomic for development using existing technologies found that the use of Halion Loop can deliver an internal rate of return of more than 75 per cent, with a payback period of just two years.
The company’s technology has applications across the circular economy and in mine sites around the world, with a current focus on copper resources and the metals commonly found with copper, including cobalt, nickel, lead and zinc.
Loop Hydrometallurgy has taken part in Macquarie University’s DeepTech Incubator.
The award nomination will help to shine a light on the work the company is doing, Mr Sammut said.
“Exposure is everything to us right now,” he said.
“Every mention of Loop Hydrometallurgy and the Halion Loop technology yields new enquiries. There is a whole world of ‘1+1=3’, and the InnovationAus Awards are another plus-sign bringing us closer to these opportunities.”
The 2025 InnovationAus Awards for Excellence will be held on November 27 at the magnificent Sydney Town Hall. You can secure individual seats or book a table here. Purchase a table of 10 and have your logo displayed on screens across the venue and in the event programme as a ‘Table Sponsor’.
The InnovationAus 2025 Awards for Excellence are proudly supported by ACS, PEXA Group, the CSIRO ON Program, Griffith Hack, TechnologyOne, Q-CTRL, National AI Centre, University of New South Wales, KPMG, AgriFutures Australia, Investment NSW and IP Australia.
Protecting your great ideas with intellectual property (IP) rights can lead to lasting benefits for your growing business. IP refers to creations of the mind, such as a brand, logo, invention, design or artistic work. Head to the IP Australia website to find out more about IP, and how it might help your business.
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