The Royal Mint's chief growth officer says recycled gold will supply all collectible coins by end-2026, as e-waste recovery and a new Bullion Bar jewellery line expand its circular gold strategy.
At a glance
- The Royal Mint's chief growth officer, Sean Millard, says all of its collectable gold coins will be struck from recycled gold — sourced from scrap coins and discarded jewellery — by the end of 2026.
- Gold recovered from discarded circuit boards at the Mint's Reformation Metals facility in Llantrisant, South Wales is refined to 999.9 purity and currently used exclusively in the 886 by The Royal Mint jewellery line.
- The facility, built around chemistry licensed from Canadian firm Excir, can process up to 4,000 tonnes of printed circuit boards a year, extracting gold at room temperature within minutes rather than through high-heat smelting.
- The Royal Mint's newly launched Bullion Bar collection reworks its investment-grade 1g Britannia gold bar into jewellery, merging its bullion and jewellery businesses for the first time.
What happened
The Royal Mint says every collectable gold coin it makes will be struck from recycled metal by the end of 2026, a shift its chief growth officer, Sean Millard, calls one of the most significant milestones in the 1,100-year-old institution's history. The gold will come from scrap coins and discarded jewellery melted down and reprocessed, not from newly mined bullion. It's the next step in a strategy that already runs through The Royal Mint's Reformation Metals facility in Llantrisant, South Wales, where gold-bearing components stripped from discarded circuit boards are chemically leached, filtered into a fine gold powder and refined to 999.9 purity. That recovered gold currently supplies only one part of the business — the 886 by The Royal Mint jewellery collection, including a newly launched Bullion Bar range that reworks the Mint's own investment-grade 1g Britannia gold bar into wearable pieces.
The details
The mechanics sit at The Royal Mint's Reformation Metals facility, on its manufacturing site in Llantrisant, South Wales, which opened in 2024 with capacity to process up to 4,000 tonnes of printed circuit boards a year. Circuit boards stripped from laptops, mobile phones, TVs and other discarded electronics are first broken down mechanically to isolate their gold-bearing components. Chemistry licensed from Excir, a Canadian clean-technology company, then leaches the gold out of that material at room temperature within minutes — a marked departure from the high-heat smelting conventional gold refining depends on. The dissolved gold is precipitated and filtered into a fine gold powder, refined on-site to 999.9 purity, then handed to The Royal Mint's jewellery workshop. The Royal Mint has said roughly 7% of the world's gold sits trapped inside end-of-life electronics, and has cited global e-waste output hitting a record 62 million tonnes in 2022, up 82% since 2010 — the scale of discarded material Reformation Metals is built to tap.
That recovered gold today flows into one place: 886 by The Royal Mint, the jewellery division The Royal Mint launched in 2022 under creative director Dominic Jones. Sean Millard, the Mint's chief growth officer, frames the move into jewellery as a natural extension of a 1,100-year history in precious metals rather than a departure from it — many of 886's craftspeople previously worked on coin production. The division's newest range, the Bullion Bar collection launched in September 2026, pushes that logic further by reworking the Mint's own investment-grade 1g Britannia gold bar, reimagined by Jones, into wearable jewellery. It's the first time The Royal Mint has directly merged its bullion investment business with its jewellery line, selling gold bars as heirloom pieces rather than only as a store of value.
The Royal Mint has been backing the recovery technology financially, not just using it. In April 2025 it took an approximate 8% equity stake in Excir and secured a board seat, formalising what had been a supply partnership into a deeper investment. Millard's stated target extends the strategy well beyond jewellery: by the end of 2026, he says, all of The Royal Mint's collectable gold coins will be struck from recycled gold sourced from scrap coins and discarded jewellery, rather than newly mined bullion. He calls it a major milestone for the business, and frames the Mint's longer-term ambition as making recycled and recovered material the majority source across coins, bullion and jewellery combined — not just an eco-friendly sideline.
For now, the volumes involved are a fraction of global gold supply, and The Royal Mint's own figures don't disclose exactly how much gold Reformation Metals has recovered to date. What the commitment signals is more about direction than immediate scale: one of the world's oldest and most recognised state mints is betting that traceable, recycled gold — not just mined bullion — is where investment and jewellery demand is heading, a theme that echoes India's own long-standing, scrap-heavy gold market even as the mechanics differ. If ambient-temperature recovery chemistry like Excir's proves economical enough for other refiners and mints to adopt at scale, recycled gold could gradually become a larger structural share of the metal reaching consumers — a slow-moving supply theme worth tracking rather than a near-term price catalyst.
Why it matters
For metalscost.com's readers, this isn't a price-moving headline — it's a supply-chain signal. India already runs one of the world's largest scrap and recycled-gold markets, so a major Western state mint publicly committing to recycled sourcing across its entire coin business validates a direction India's jewellers and refiners have leaned on for decades. It's also a reminder that 'gold' reaching buyers increasingly carries a traceable origin story — mined, scrap, or now e-waste-recovered — which is starting to matter to how the metal is marketed, not just how it's priced.
Our read
Outlook: neutral. This is a corporate sourcing and sustainability strategy story, not a market-moving event. The Royal Mint's recycled-gold initiatives don't change near-term gold supply or demand at a scale that would move spot prices, though the shift toward recycled and recovered sourcing is a real, slow-moving structural theme for gold's supply chain.
What to watch
- Whether The Royal Mint hits its stated end-of-2026 target of sourcing all collectable gold coins from recycled material
- Reformation Metals' e-waste processing volumes relative to its roughly 4,000-tonne-a-year printed-circuit-board capacity
- Consumer sales performance of the newly launched Bullion Bar jewellery collection as a gauge of demand for 'wearable investment' gold products
- Whether other national mints or major bullion refiners license or replicate Excir-style ambient-temperature gold recovery technology
For information only, not investment advice.
Gold price in India
metalscost.com India reference price as of 2026-10-03.
Detailed analysis
Timeline
- 2022-01-01: The Royal Mint launches 886 by The Royal Mint, its jewellery division, under creative director Dominic Jones.
- 2024-01-01: The Royal Mint's Reformation Metals precious-metals recovery facility opens at its Llantrisant site in South Wales, built around gold-recovery chemistry licensed from Excir.
- 2025-04-10: The Royal Mint takes an approximate 8% equity stake in Excir and gains a board seat, deepening the technology partnership.
- 2026-09-01: 886 by The Royal Mint launches its Bullion Bar collection, reworking the Mint's 1g Britannia gold bar into jewellery.
- 2026-09-22: Chief growth officer Sean Millard tells Professional Jeweller that all Royal Mint collectable gold coins will be sourced from recycled gold by the end of 2026.
Demand Drivers
Millard points to 'growing consumer interest in products with authenticity, provenance and lasting value' as the demand-side rationale for tying investment-grade bullion to wearable jewellery. The new Bullion Bar collection reshapes the Mint's own 1g Britannia gold bar — one of its established investment products — into jewellery designed by Dominic Jones, explicitly positioned as a 'wearable asset' rather than a purely decorative purchase.
Supply Drivers
The Royal Mint's Reformation Metals facility can process up to 4,000 tonnes of printed circuit boards a year, recovering gold through chemistry licensed from Excir rather than sourcing it freshly mined. E-waste-recovered gold today is used only in the 886 jewellery line, but by the end of 2026 the Mint plans to source all of its collectable gold coins from recycled material — scrap coins and discarded jewellery — adding a genuine, if still small relative to global mine output, recycled stream to its own gold supply chain.
Refinery Output
Reformation Metals functions as an alternative, lower-temperature refining route: instead of the high-heat smelting conventional gold refining requires, Excir's chemistry pulls gold out of shredded circuit-board material through liquid leaching within minutes, then precipitates and filters it into a fine gold powder refined to 999.9 purity on-site — an efficiency gain The Royal Mint is now scaling beyond a single jewellery line.
What could lift prices
- A state mint publicly committing to source all collectable coins from recycled gold by end-2026 could nudge other national mints and refiners toward similar circular-sourcing commitments — a mild long-run structural tailwind for the reputational and price premium of provenance-verified gold products.
What could weigh on prices
- Recycled and recovered gold — from e-waste, scrap coins and discarded jewellery — is an additional, non-mined supply stream; if recovery technology like Excir's scales across the wider refining industry, it could marginally ease reliance on newly mined gold over time, though The Royal Mint's own recovery volumes remain small next to global mine output.
Country impact
| Country | Impact | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | High | Reformation Metals and The Royal Mint's wider recovery, bullion and jewellery operations sit at its Llantrisant site in South Wales, tying a state-owned institution's growth strategy directly to UK manufacturing and recycling capacity. |
| Canada | Low | Excir, The Royal Mint's recovery-technology partner, is a Canadian clean-technology company whose patented chemistry underpins the entire e-waste gold recovery process. |
Industry impact
| Industry | Effect | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Jewellery | Positive | Recovered, traceable gold and the merged bullion-jewellery Bullion Bar line give 886 by The Royal Mint a differentiated provenance story that conventional gold jewellery lacks. |
| Electronics Recycling | Positive | The Royal Mint's equity stake in Excir and its 4,000-tonne-a-year circuit-board processing capacity give UK e-waste collectors and recyclers a large, well-capitalised buyer for gold-bearing electronic scrap. |
Who gains, who loses
- 886 by The Royal Mint (jewellery division): Traceable, e-waste-recovered gold and the new Bullion Bar range give the jewellery line a differentiated provenance story tied directly to the Mint's own bullion products.
- UK e-waste collectors and recyclers: The Royal Mint's 4,000-tonne-a-year circuit-board processing capacity and its stake in Excir create a large, well-funded buyer for gold-bearing electronic scrap sourced from across the country.
- Excir: The Royal Mint's roughly 8% equity investment and board seat, taken in April 2025, gives the Canadian technology firm capital and a flagship industrial-scale reference customer for its patented gold-recovery chemistry.
- Conventional high-temperature gold refiners: Excir's ambient-temperature leaching process recovers gold from circuit boards in minutes without the high heat traditional refining requires, a potential competitive pressure on energy-intensive refiners if recovered-gold sourcing scales further.
Other ways this could play out
- If other national mints and large refiners adopt ambient-temperature recovery chemistry similar to Excir's, recycled and recovered gold could become a structurally larger share of global supply over the next decade.
- If e-waste and scrap volumes, or the economics of recovering them, don't scale as planned, The Royal Mint's recycled-gold push could stay concentrated in the 886 jewellery line and its collectable coins rather than materially reshaping its wider bullion business.
Price risks
- No near-term catalyst for spot gold pricing; this is a supply-chain and sourcing strategy story, not a demand or price signal
- Longer-term, broader adoption of e-waste and scrap gold recovery technology across the refining industry could add a modest non-mined supply stream — a factor to monitor rather than an immediate price risk
Historical comparison
- 2010 to 2022: Global e-waste output rose 82% to a record 62 million tonnes in 2022, according to figures cited by The Royal Mint — the scale of discarded electronics its Reformation Metals facility is built to tap for gold recovery.
Technical view
Price is trading below both its 20-period and 50-period moving averages, a bearish alignment.
Computed from metalscost.com's own stored price history.
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