DEScycle secures £8.6m from Horizon Europe and EIC Accelerator
This article covers DEScycle, a metals-recovery startup, securing £8.6m in a growth funding round of non-dilutive grants to validate a modular metals processing demo plant in Teesside and support traceability work on recovered critical and precious metals. The funding supports demonstration and commercial validation of distributed modular processing and digital product passports to help shorten and diversify supply chains for metals used in electrification, advanced manufacturing and digital infrastructure.
DEScycle has secured £8.6m in a growth funding round made up of non-dilutive grants from UK and European innovation programmes, backing its move to validate a modular metals processing demo plant in Teesside and support traceability work on recovered critical and precious metals. The funding arrives as governments and industry across the UK and Europe press for more resilient raw materials supply chains for advanced manufacturing, electrification and digital infrastructure.
Why it matters
Metals processing remains highly centralised and capital intensive, leaving many industrial customers exposed to long, geopolitically concentrated supply chains. DEScycle’s funding push targets that vulnerability by backing technology to recover critical and precious metals closer to where waste and end-of-life electronics are generated. If the company can demonstrate repeatable, modular processing at commercial scale, it could reduce reliance on distant suppliers and offer more traceable domestic feedstocks for sectors from electrification to data centres.
Inside the product
DEScycle is developing a distributed, modular metals processing platform that starts with electronic waste and aims to recover above-ground critical and precious metals. Key working areas supported by this round include longer operation of its Teesside demo plant, gathering data to refine process design, expanding customer trial capability and integrating complementary technologies into the platform.
The company is also developing digital product passports to provide traceability for recovered metals and help customers verify provenance across supply chains. Construction of the demo plant is underway in Teesside, with launch targeted for the second half of 2026 as DEScycle works towards commercial validation and techno-economic milestones.
Who are the investors?
The funding is dominated by competitive, non-dilutive public innovation programmes rather than private equity. Confirmed awards over the past 10 months include:
- £4.3m from EU Horizon (Horizon Europe)
- £2.2m from the EIC Accelerator
- £1.3m from Germany’s SPRIND
- £0.9m via Innovate UK Investor Partnerships
- £0.5m through a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship
Together these awards total more than £8.6m in confirmed grant funding. DEScycle says its total capital secured across equity, grants and partner funding is approximately £30m to date.
The money is earmarked to de-risk deployment — extending demo plant runs, generating data for design decisions, enabling customer trials and integrating additional technologies. DEScycle has also secured strategic and commercial validation from partners including Mitsubishi (industrial group), GAP Group (materials handling and logistics) and Cisco (networking and digital systems), with GAP Group and Cisco confirmed for customer trials in 2026.
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Founder perspective
In the announcement, Fred White, Co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer at DEScycle, said:
Critical raw materials are becoming a strategic priority for both the UK and Europe, and that is creating growing demand for new metals processing infrastructure. Securing more than £8.6m (€10m) in confirmed non-dilutive funding across competitive European and UK programmes is a strong signal of the importance of domestic metals recovery.
For DEScycle, this funding helps de-risk deployment by allowing us to run our demo plant for longer, generate more data and make better design decisions before commercial scale-up. It also enables us to trial and integrate complementary technologies into our platform, helping us bring a stronger product to market.
The bigger picture
The awards underline a broader shift in UK and European industrial strategy: public programmes are prioritising domestic capability in critical raw materials as a strategic priority. For startups moving from lab to industrial deployment, the mix of grant and partner funding can be essential to bridge costly demonstration phases that are hard to finance with early-stage equity alone.
The DEScycle case is one among several initiatives across Europe seeking to shorten, diversify and make more traceable the supply chains for metals used in electrification, AI infrastructure and other advanced industries. Its progress on the Teesside demo will be a useful signal for policymakers, industrial customers and supplychain investors watching whether modular, localised processing can be scaled affordably in the coming years.
They've invested in DEScycle
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