The European Commission has recognised CRITICAL.'s Urban Mining Factory for Printed Circuit Boards (UMF/PCB) as a Strategic Project under the EU's Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA). The designation, announced on 9 October 2026, aims to accelerate development of European refining capacity to recover critical metals from low‑grade discarded printed circuit boards (PCBs).
Recovering more elements from low‑grade PCBs
PCBs contain a wide range of elements, but their compositional complexity and relatively low metal content make many waste streams uneconomical to process with current European recycling infrastructure. CRITICAL. says its UMF/PCB will begin by targeting nine elements and is designed to scale towards recovering and refining up to 24 different elements to industrial specifications for customers in the semiconductor, electronics, energy and broader manufacturing sectors.
Why the Strategic Project status matters
Under the CRMA, Strategic Project recognition is intended to reduce administrative uncertainty and speed up project delivery for facilities that strengthen European raw material resilience. For CRITICAL., the designation provides a framework for coordinated permitting, including a central contact point in the Netherlands and priority handling of applications. The regulation also limits the standard permitting timeline for recycling and processing projects to 15 months in principle, subject to exceptions, and allows the company to request EU‑level advice on financing and potential public support.
Industrial scaling and next steps
The UMF/PCB project will move into detailed technical design, site selection, permitting and financing negotiations next. CRITICAL. plans the UMF/PCB as part of a larger platform strategy that combines multiple waste streams to create industrial synergies and scale advantages. The company targets an annual processing capacity of about 15,000 tonnes of discarded PCBs from 2029 onwards.
Context and company background
CRITICAL., launched in October 2024, develops an integrated urban‑mining refinery platform that combines proven technologies at scale to recover critical raw materials and other valuable metals from complex waste streams such as PCBs, solar panels and industrial residues. The platform approach is intended to improve recovery efficiency by aggregating complementary material flows, technology, infrastructure and financing to serve European manufacturing supply chains and reduce dependency on external suppliers.
Source: Original press release
