Critical metals from waste, recovered by biology.
REEForge recovers rare earths and critical minerals from fly ash, slag, red mud and e-waste, using microbes to leach and engineered binding proteins to separate.
Industrial waste in
Fly ash, slag, red mud, spent catalysts and e-waste.
Microbes mobilise metals
Consortia isolated from the feedstock dissolve metals under mild conditions.
Proteins capture targets
EF-hand binding proteins separate chemically similar metals selectively.
Two established fields, one platform.
REEForge pairs bioleaching with protein-based metal separation, so recovery is both gentle on the process and selective on the metal.
Microbes do the dissolving
Consortia isolated from the feedstocks themselves mobilise metals under mild conditions, using acid-producing and organic-acid-producing routes.
Proteins do the sorting
EF-hand binding proteins tell chemically similar metals apart, enabling selective recovery without long solvent-extraction chains.
Modular by design
Leaching and separation are decoupled. Adapt the microbes to a new feedstock and the binders to new target metals.
One platform, many waste streams.
We adapt the microbes and the binders to the feedstock, not the other way round.
Coal fly ash
Rare earths, aluminium, gallium
Red mud
Scandium, rare earths, titanium
Steel and power-plant slag
Vanadium, manganese, chromium
Spent refinery catalysts
Nickel, molybdenum, vanadium, cobalt
E-waste circuit boards
Copper, gold, palladium, rare earths
Phosphogypsum
Rare earths
End-of-life solar panels
Silver, silicon, copper
Have a waste stream? We'd like to test it.
Built by people who have scaled bioprocesses.
REEForge was founded in Bangalore to turn India's industrial waste into a domestic source of critical minerals, using biology in place of harsh chemistry.
Anusha
CO-FOUNDERAbout 8 years of bioprocess and fermentation scale-up across Copenhagen, Hamburg and India. M.Sc., Technical University of Hamburg.
Ankith K R
CO-FOUNDER · GTM AND BUSINESS DEVELOPMENTFour-plus years in climate-tech startup operations, fundraising and B2B partnerships, contributing to Seed and Pre-Series A rounds totalling INR 34 Cr+. MBA, Marketing and Finance.
Sivakumar Boopathy, PhD
CO-FOUNDER · SCIENTIFIC LEADPhD protein biochemist with 13 years in research and 10 publications, including PNAS and Nature Communications. Led studies that secured $2.5M in funding, and cut recombinant protein production costs by about 75% through optimised Pichia fermentation.
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