A new piece of copper processing technology unveiled by Loop Hydrometallurgy could reshape how the metal is produced for the global mining industry.

Founded at Macquarie University, the Australian start-up’s Halion Loop leaches, purifies and recovers copper directly using simple salt water.

Loop said the new technology solves a problem that has plagued the industry for decades, where traditional copper extraction undergoes three major industrial steps, with loads of concentrate transported over thousands of kilometres and up to 90 per cent of material being discarded as waste.

The Halion Loop is said to require up to 70 per cent less power than current methods.

“We use simple salt water at less than 100°C, with no noxious gas emissions and no liquid effluents, and we do it at the mine site,” Loop Hydrometallurgy chief executive officer (CEO) and founder Dave Sammut said.

An industrial chemist who had been working on the technology for more than 30 years, Sammut said his modelling suggests this process could reduce the net carbon footprint of copper production by up to 80 per cent.

“Saving energy while extracting high volumes of copper is our secret sauce,” he said.

“We’ve developed the hardware that can directly pull metals back into high-purity forms, without having to convert them or use additional chemistry.”

Loop Hydrometallurgy, headquartered at Macquarie University in Sydney, has developed and advanced the “cleaner copper technology” with a science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) team largely recruited from student ranks. The team, made up of 75 per cent female engineers and scientists, is part of a growing “innovation ecosystem” on campus that brings research, industry knowledge, and real-world applications together, Sammut said.

Loop Hydrometallurgy co-founder and commercial director Heath Warman calledthe technology an “economic game-changer” for mining.

“We estimate that a typical Australian mine could reduce operating costs by 30 to 40 per cent,” he said.

“Governments will also benefit through significantly increased royalties, because mines will be producing value-added final products in Australia instead of shipping that value overseas.”

The new technology also unlocks vast known resources such as arsenic-contaminated copper, which is unsuitable for traditional extraction methods. It was recently estimated that 25 per cent of known copper resources in Australia have arsenic contamination.

The process also captures other critical metals directly at the mine site, including lead, zinc, nickel, cobalt, silver, gold, platinum group metals, and rare earth elements.

The current pilot cell prototype will produce around 20kg of copper per day, with plans to scale up to two tonnes per day per commercial cell.

“We expect to be commercially producing copper by the beginning of 2028,” Sammut said. “Our vision for the Halion Loop is an industry transformed, revolutionising global copper production.”

This project is being conducted in collaboration with the Macquarie University DeepTech Incubator and associate professor Koushik Venkatesan, with $1.3 million of Cooperative Research Centre Projects (CRC-P) funding support from the Australian Government.

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