Best Startups in Critical Raw Materials & Automated Disassembly
Which startups are solving Europe’s two key circular economy challenges: automated disassembly and critical raw materials recovery?
This episode covers the Circular Technology Award, launched by Circular Republic and Knorr-Bremse, to back startups working in both fields.
Matthias Ballweg, co-founder of Circular Republic, and Oliver Klug, Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer at Knorr-Bremse, explain why they created the award, what they learned from the applicants, and why they paired prize money with proof-of-concept partnerships instead of funding alone.
What you’ll hear in this episode:
- Why automated disassembly is finally viable, and what the robots can now do that they couldn’t five years ago.
- How two very different approaches recover critical raw materials in Europe: hydrogen to reclaim rare earth magnets, and low-temperature salts to pull metals from electronic scrap.
- What corporates like Knorr-Bremse look for before adopting a startup’s technology.
The four winning startups then present what they’ve built: Xavier Kohll from R3 Robotics and Tomaso Manca from Hiro Robotics winners in automated disassembly, Carlo Burkhardt from HyProMag and Fred White from DEScycle winners in critical raw materials recovery.
This is the final episode of the IFAT Munich 2026 series, recorded live at the fair.
Video Impression
People
Matthias Ballweg, Co-Founder, Circular Republic
https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthias-ballweg/
Oliver Klug, Chief Strategy & Transformation Officer, Knorr-Bremse
https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliver-klug-932650148/
Patrick Hypscher, Circular Business Strategist, PaaS Expert
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hypscher/
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
01:22 The Circular Technology Award
02:03 Why automated disassembly and critical raw materials
03:56 What the applicant pool showed
05:52 Who is Knorr-Bremse
06:39 Why Knorr-Bremse joined the award
08:07 A proof-of-concept, not just prize money
10:51 R3 Robotics: robotic disassembly
14:09 Hiro Robotics: rethinking electronics disassembly
18:16 Descycle: recovering metals from e-waste
21:53 HyProMag: recycling rare-earth magnets
25:51 Closing and what is next
About
IFAT is the world’s leading trade fair network for environmental technologies. It focuses on water, wastewater, waste, recycling and circularity, bringing together companies, innovators and industry professionals to present solutions for resource efficiency and sustainable infrastructure.
IFAT Munich is the flagship event of that network and the most important meeting place for the sector. It takes place every two years in Munich and showcases technologies and services for water, wastewater, waste and raw materials management, with the 2026 edition featuring around 3,400 exhibitors from about 60 countries.
Further Links
Knorr-Bremse Circular Technology Award: https://www.circular-republic.org/award/
IFAT: https://ifat.de/en/
Circular Republic: https://www.circular-republic.org
UnternehmerTUM: https://www.unternehmertum.de
Knorr-Bremse: https://www.knorr-bremse.com/en/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Introduction
Matthias Ballweg: Automated disassembly is basically physical AI. It’s the AI use case for Europe.
Patrick Hypscher: My name is Patrick Hypscher, and this is Circularity.fm, the podcast about understanding, building and managing circular business models. You’re listening to the final episode in our IFAT series. The IFAT is the world’s leading trade fair in environmental technologies. In the previous episodes, we talked about sovereignty, we talked about the economic potential of circularity and the startup landscape. Today, we will bring all of this together and present to you the winners from the Circular Technology Award. Before we get to know the four winners from the award, Matthias Ballweg, co-founder of Circular Republic, and Oliver Klug, Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer from Knorr-Bremse, will provide us with some background information about the award and the motivation to launch it. Let’s start with Matthias.
[00:01:22] The Circular Technology Award
Patrick Hypscher: Matthias, you co-founded Circular Republic almost four years ago. Now, this year, you launched the Tech Award. Why did you start that?
Matthias Ballweg: The Tech Award was a joint idea with Knorr-Bremse. Knorr-Bremse is a classic German Mittelstand SME company, a rather large one, to be honest, that is really looking to build future-proof business. I think that’s why we started talking. So we started to look into that space where are promising fields for international industry players based in Germany to innovate. Where does circularity offer innovation potential?
[00:02:03] Why automated disassembly and critical raw materials
Patrick Hypscher: Okay. And I guess you evaluated a couple of options. Why did you ultimately choose on these two fields?
Matthias Ballweg: So we thought, we’ve chosen automated disassembly and critical raw material recycling. And it feels like the perfect point in time for both. So first, we are heading in a geopolitical time where obviously resource scarcity, especially around critical raw materials, is becoming hugely important. And that is building a market, that is building a business opportunity. And that’s from the market pull side. And then on the other hand, there is now technology available that wasn’t available five or ten years ago. Robotics technology, really the S-curve is now tipping up. AI, similar. And automated disassembly is basically physical AI, if you will. It’s the AI use case for Europe. So we might not be the global champions in every AI use case in Europe, but for automated disassembly, we are. And it wasn’t available five years ago even. Now it is. In Europe, you can have a robot arm disassembling products, even deciding whether screws are rusted or not, and acting accordingly. That is completely new tech, while at the same time, this market pull, the need for securing sovereignty for those materials is coming together. And then we said, now that’s the opportunity to build a business. And it’s still a bet, right? But that’s how innovation and entrepreneurship always works, right? You do bet on a certain risk and bet on a certain trend. I believe this is the right trend. Sustainability together with geopolitical uncertainty are both not going to go away. The technology is now there. So let’s catch the opportunity.
[00:03:56] What the applicant pool showed
Patrick Hypscher: Okay, wonderful. Before we hear Oliver’s perspective from Knorr-Bremse, let me get some idea about the startups. You’ve got many applicants. I can assume many solutions. So what have been your observations? Is there any pattern or any white spot?
Matthias Ballweg: I mean, we will have a different episode on the startup landscape.
Patrick Hypscher: Yes, but with the focus of the award, what stood out for you?
Matthias Ballweg: So we realized while it’s a hot topic, there are not that many startups yet. We think, yes, we’ve got a lot of applications, and we feel like we’ve got the full market of circularity startups in the set of applications. But it’s not that there are hundreds of startups that are building robot arms to disassemble stuff and then have new recycling. It’s not that there’s a lot of new technology. And that’s maybe one finding. And the second one is you need a lot of complementary technologies. Quite a bunch of startups that are focusing on visioning, detecting what kind of material is it actually, that, this example, detecting the screw and deciding is it rusted, that’s completely different also technology and skill sets than steering the subsequent robot arm, than doing any kind of hydrological, thermic or chemical or even mechanical recycling process in the end. And you need in any case to, like a chain, right? Put a couple of startups next to each other to enable circularity in any kind of electronic or critical raw material value chain. It’s not that there is one player doing everything.
Patrick Hypscher: Okay, Matthias, thanks for setting this up. I think it’s again a huge contribution to the circular economy in Germany and Europe. And let’s hope it will spark some additional innovation.
Matthias Ballweg: Thank you.
Patrick Hypscher: Thank you. And thank you for making the story so cool.
[00:05:52] Who is Knorr-Bremse
Patrick Hypscher: Oliver, we just learned from Matthias about the Tech Award. And Knorr-Bremse is the partner of this award. You’re the Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer. Before we look at the award, can you say a few words about Knorr-Bremse?
Oliver Klug: Yes, of course. So Knorr-Bremse is one of the leading technology and market leaders for braking systems for the truck and rail industry. We are in 100 locations in 30 countries. Last year, we made a revenue of 7.8 billion euro and a profit of 11.6% EBIT. So it’s a pretty strong market leader with a lot of technology, a lot of good engineers and a lot of innovation in the truck and rail industry, yes.
[00:06:39] Why Knorr-Bremse joined the award
Patrick Hypscher: Okay, wonderful. Why did you decide to partner up with Circular Republic for the Tech Award?
Oliver Klug: I mean, Circular Republic is, from our point of view, connected with the TU Munich, yeah. And we got this connection with our research where I looked who could be a good partner. And Circular Republic is definitely one of the organizations which could facilitate us to open us the network within the circular economy startup and also scale up a community. And that was one of the reasons to go there. There are also good expertise, good people which could open up this field for us.
Patrick Hypscher: And the topics, the two topics with the two awards, how much are they relevant for you?
Oliver Klug: Actually, we selected, of course, or we researched within the green tech area a lot of topics where we thought that could be of interest. Also, where we in Knorr-Bremse have at least some kind of, I don’t want to say nucleus, but we have a reman business, which is, of course, something which we can build up on. And because of this nucleus, on the one hand for this automated dismantling, but also on the other hand with the critical raw material recovery, where we also see in our supply chain that this is a very important topic within circularity, where we thought that’s a potential field for us to analyze if this is for Knorr-Bremse, maybe a potential business field.
[00:08:07] A proof-of-concept, not just prize money
Patrick Hypscher: Sounds interesting. So you now do not only award prize money, or the award does not only award prize money, but also a POC, a partnership with Knorr-Bremse. Why did you do that?
Oliver Klug: Because our intention is not only to award now money to some great guys, and we saw a lot of great innovations, but we also want to implement it. Not only talking and having nice concepts, and we saw a lot of startups which have great ideas, but are not in this implementation status, where we thought that’s a point to make it into reality, and also where we actually can benefit, of course, within our industry, within our operations, to use these concepts and implement it.
Patrick Hypscher: And maybe there’s even the risk that you will do even more POCs with the other startups.
Oliver Klug: Not a risk, it’s a chance. It’s a chance if we see that there are some other ideas which make sense, and we saw a couple of ideas where we say it could also make sense to look into POCs with them. But let’s see. We want to start with two, because it’s not our home turf, to be honest. And it’s for us a little bit more, of course, than an experiment, but we want to look into this, and we want to also learn. That’s also why we are doing this POC, to learn what they are doing, how this can benefit the Knorr-Bremse AG.
Patrick Hypscher: You said there have been many really interesting startups you screened. At the same time, is there a field that is missing or like an approach where I said, ah, like to the future founders out there, this is an opportunity. Here we have a challenge and someone should pick it up.
Oliver Klug: Actually, because our two topics were so concrete, I thought it was not really a question of not enough innovative ideas. For me, it was more, maybe not astonishing, but as I said, also why we do the POC, the implementation. They have good ideas, of course, they maybe lack people who support them, so they can really get into reality. And that’s for me even more important that this is something what we saw that is missing, why we also with this award and with the POC hopefully can give them a little bit of push that they can be successful in the future.
Patrick Hypscher: Yeah, it’s an amazing contribution to the community, Oliver. And I’m super curious. I mean, we’re talking now before the award celebration, and curious how the startups will react and wish you all the best with the POC.
Oliver Klug: Thank you very much.
Patrick Hypscher: Thanks a lot.
[00:10:51] R3 Robotics: robotic disassembly
Patrick Hypscher: Xavier, you’re the CTO of R3 and just won the Tech Award. Congratulations to that. What’s the problem you’re solving?
Xavier Kohll: Yeah, thanks, first of all. Super excited to win the Circular Technology Award today and taking it for the entire company, R3 Robotics. So the problem that we’re generally solving is that to build a circular economy, you need to repair, reuse, recycle products that we have. And at R3 Robotics, we’re building a robotic disassembly platform. So we use large industrial robots to disassemble products. For example, lithium-ion batteries, right? Lithium-ion batteries today, once they reach the end of life, they need to be, you can reuse components and then at some point you need to recycle that. To do that at scale and also in a safe way, you’d like to use robots because for humans, it’s a dull, dexterous and dangerous job. So we automate what is dangerous, heavy, to close the circular economy loop, to scale the processes where today there are bottlenecks. And we do that for batteries today and also started to doing it for e-drives. And at some point we’ll go to the entire electric vehicle because today EVs are like a computer on wheels and there are so many valuable components and you’d like at an industrial scale to do that automatically. Recover the components, recover the critical raw materials.
Patrick Hypscher: Okay. You said you’re building a platform. What does that mean?
Xavier Kohll: Yeah. So what do I mean by that is part of our platform is the basis of our robotic system, which is the eyes, the brain, the arm and the skills, which can be used not only on one product, batteries, but also on multiple products. And what our vision is, is that the platform in its functionalities and what it can do is so broad and so intelligent that in the future you can put almost any valuable product or waste electronic product to the robot and it starts to disassemble it to recover components for reuse, or to enable efficient downstream recycling.
Patrick Hypscher: Okay. So who are your customers?
Xavier Kohll: Great question. So we have a broad spectrum of customers. We work with OEMs, we work with recyclers, basically anybody that has either a large income of, for example, end of life electric batteries or has a fleet of electric vehicles that at some point he needs to dispose the batteries or the e-drives. And our robots disassemble either as a robot as a service. So not in our facilities, but our customer facilities, the robots disassemble. Or you can use also our facilities where we disassemble your products for you.
Patrick Hypscher: I’m pretty sure there will be huge demand for the kind of solutions you are building. So congratulations again and thanks for sharing the overview of your product.
Xavier Kohll: Yeah. Thank you.
[00:14:09] Hiro Robotics: rethinking electronics disassembly
Patrick Hypscher: Tomaso, congratulations for the award. Tell us a bit about Hiro. What’s the problem you’re solving?
Tomaso Manca: I mean, Hiro Robotics is an Italian-based company. We are working on robotics and AI for electronic waste disassembly. The problem today is that even if we use electronic devices every day and every day we throw that in the garbage, the way we are disassembling them is the same as 100 years ago. Either they manually disassemble them, which is good for the recovery rate of the material but it’s not scalable and it’s slow. Either they shred everything together but you lost a lot of percent of material, almost 25 percent of the material is lost. Even if you have pollutants within the electronic device you are going to pollute all the material that you could recover. So that’s why there is a need today for a different solution, a new way of doing stuff. As the electronic devices evolved over the years, now we need to make also the way we are disassembling them evolve.
Patrick Hypscher: Okay, and when you say electronics, so what kind of electronics are we talking about?
Tomaso Manca: Actually we started from the TVs. One of our objectives since the beginning was having our systems working in real treatment centers, generating value, producing data as soon as we could. So we succeeded in this. We are one of the few companies working in automation for disassembling that already has market traction and working plants. So we started from a waste that was kind of easy. It was super complicated but we can say it was easy to disassemble and at the same time a lot of value inside. So we started from televisions. We had a full plant made of three robotic stations automating different tasks of the disassembling process of television and then we made this system evolve. We made it capable of unscrewing and disassembling different classes of waste but we moved to professional waste, data centers, a class of waste that will explode with the AI evolution, inverters that are waste that have many screws so they are again kind of simple to disassemble and at the same time they have a lot of value. But we are now moving to electric motors, electric vehicles, electric batteries so looking for the next step either in the classes of waste we want to treat and either on the procedure we can automate.
Patrick Hypscher: Okay. And Tomaso, tell us what is special about your solution.
Tomaso Manca: I mean, as I said, one thing that is super special, the most special, is that our systems are already working. We already have customers wanting to have our technologies in their treatment centers to do things differently and to disassemble with our robots. Technically speaking, what’s different is that we do not need a recipe. We don’t need data about what we are disassembling. I mean, we don’t, I don’t need to know that this is a specific model of TV, a specific brand. No, we teach the robot how to recognize the screws. We teach automation how to adapt to the screen size. So even for operators in that field that are maybe not super skilled, yeah, it’s super easy. They put the monitor on the conveyor and then the robot will do the job.
Patrick Hypscher: Okay, wonderful. Last question, talking about customers. So what kind of customers are you serving to? Who should now listen carefully?
Tomaso Manca: Okay. We started from the simplest one, again, simplest, the treatment centers. So those recycling centers that are taking the waste and disassembling them in different parts and different components. But then we start seeing there was an interest for our solution also within the producer, the electronic producers, like also today for the award. So who is building electronic, who is building, they want to start to recover the same material they use for their products to do new products, to make new products. And then also the retailers. So who is reselling and selling those devices, like huge companies that are selling thousands of electronics, they wanted to start recovering the devices that reach the end of life and start recycling that. So recycling centers, producers and also retailers.
Patrick Hypscher: I see a bright future for Hiro. Thank you so much.
Tomaso Manca: Thank you. Thank you.
[00:18:16] Descycle: recovering metals from e-waste
Patrick Hypscher: Fred, you’re the co-founder and COO of Descycle and just won the Circular Technology Award. Congratulations.
Fred White: Thank you. Thank you so much. We’re super pumped about it.
Patrick Hypscher: What’s the problem you’re actually solving?
Fred White: So we’re looking at a world facing accelerating demand for critical metals, but places like Europe and the UK are very limited by geology. But we already have very metal-rich resources above ground and onshore, and that’s domestic waste streams. So what we’re doing is transforming domestic waste streams into sovereign metal supply.
Patrick Hypscher: And when you say domestic waste streams, I guess there’s a specific part of it you’re looking at.
Fred White: Yes, exactly that. So we’re going after things like consumer electronics, data center waste, everything electrical and electronic that has things like circuit boards, server boards, CPUs, and that is the base feedstock we’re recovering with our first version of our tech.
Patrick Hypscher: Okay, and how does that work?
Fred White: So we’ve actually got a, what we call a third path. It’s, we recover metals with low temperature liquid salts rather than using acids, rather than using smelters which burn everything at high heat. So this is a first of a kind metal recovery system that we’re deploying.
Patrick Hypscher: So low temperature liquid salt.
Fred White: Yes. So we dissolve metals in salts, much like salt dissolves in water, if you can picture that. And what we do is we use different versions of these salts to dissolve different metals. We can be selective on which metals we dissolve and then which metals we recover from these special salts. And these special salts, they’re a new class of chemistry, never commercialized before, called deep eutectic solvents, or DES for short, hence the name Descycle.
Patrick Hypscher: Ah, now I get it. And what kind of metals are you looking at?
Fred White: So the first feedstocks, the value are in gold, in copper, in silver, in palladium, in tin. We’re also recovering iron, aluminium in quite large quantities as well. And then we’re branching out into other feedstocks such as PV panels, which contain large amounts of things like silica alongside silver and other metals as well.
Patrick Hypscher: Okay, and where do you sit in the value chain? So what’s the input material you get and what’s then the output you can sell?
Fred White: So we are a midstream metal recovery technology, replacing the role of smelting in the reverse supply chain. So we’re not doing the upstream collection and disassembly. So we’re not going to take receipts of televisions and laptops, for example. There’s an upstream market that already does that job, and what they do is containerize the valuable components and they ship them off to the smelters. So what we’re offering is a domestic solution to process that material in country, transforming scrap materials into high purity metals. Our metal products are then sold to refiners or straight back into the manufacturing chain, depending on the metal and form.
Patrick Hypscher: And final question, who are your ideal customers?
Fred White: Yeah, so we have a couple different groups of customers. There are consumer electronics recyclers. There are ITADs which deal in the data center space. We can provide you faster and cheaper or better payment terms than your existing contracts, all you need to know, and a more sustainable solution. We’re also working with major OEMs. We have two major strategic investors, one is Cisco in the US and one is Mitsubishi from Japan. What we’re working on with them is how can we enact a closed loop supply chain by producing known provenance traceable metal supply from the domestic waste streams. So what we’re doing there is tagging digital product passports on. So if you’re interested in either closed loop supply or simply earning more money from your existing recycling activities, please come and talk to us.
Patrick Hypscher: Wonderful, all the best for scaling. And thank you so much.
Fred White: Thank you so much. Pleasure.
[00:21:53] HyProMag: recycling rare-earth magnets
Patrick Hypscher: Carlo, you’re the co-founder of HyProMag. Congratulations for winning the technology award.
Carlo Burkhardt: Thank you very much.
Patrick Hypscher: What is the problem you’re solving?
Carlo Burkhardt: We are recycling magnets, permanent magnets based on rare earths. And rare earths is one of the most critical materials concerning the supply risk because majority of the material is coming from China. And we’re recycling the material that’s in Europe. So we’re building a kind of resilient and independent and also sustainable supply chain of magnets.
Patrick Hypscher: Okay, and how do you do that?
Carlo Burkhardt: We have developed in a European project that’s called Resilience, a process that’s very sustainable. We’re working with hydrogen, so we’re introducing the magnet to hydrogen, and because of the high reactivity of the neodymium, we’re forming a hydride. It sounds very complicated, but you can compare it with water that’s freezing in the winter, that’s expanding the volume and making a crack. And also this hydride is expanding in volume and is breaking the material apart. And the beauty of it is that it’s also demagnetizing, so we can easily shake out the produced powder of the magnetic or metallic components, which normally is an issue because magnets stick to everything. And because of this demagnetization, we can have a rotating vessel where we put in semi-disassembled scrap. We rotate the whole reactor and then the powder falls out. And then we can collect this powder, we sieve it and press new magnets out of it. So we don’t go back to the various oxides as a chemical route would do. We stay in the alloy, so neodymium boron, and that allows us to be about 90% more economic with respect to energy but also with respect to use of acids and chemicals.
Patrick Hypscher: Okay, that sounds impressive. Where do you sit in the value chain? If you get like the same scrap, you have the powder, so who is before you and who are actually your customers in here?
Carlo Burkhardt: I mean, we’re shortening the value chain. So we’re at one hand, we are kind of recycling. So we buy also semi-disassembled scrap, for example, hardy stripes, which are a good source for magnets recycling. And then we are a powder producer. We are also delivering powder to other magnets producers because you can mix it with new material. So we can more easily meet also recycling targets. So by mixing, for example, 95% of new material with 5% of scrap material. So we deliver that material to other magnets producers, but we also produce our own magnets, preferably 100% recycled for, let’s say, kind of special applications.
Patrick Hypscher: Okay. And what are your ideal customers?
Carlo Burkhardt: Well, our ideal customers are obviously coming from Europe. They need magnets. And the customer base is extremely broad because magnets are used in medical, in electronics, in automotive, in green energy, in wind turbines. So it’s a very broad portfolio. And we see that appetite of the customers is bigger with a small and medium-sized company.
Patrick Hypscher: Okay.
Carlo Burkhardt: Because they have a bigger supply risk, whereas the very large companies, they still can source from China. So the ideal customer this time is midsize, but obviously we’re also targeting the very big ones. But then the price pressure is higher if it comes to sustainable material.
Patrick Hypscher: Carlo, this is a really impressive solution that you’ve built and really pressing in terms of what we need right now. So congratulations again and all the best. Thank you very much.
Carlo Burkhardt: Thank you very much. Yeah, we’re very positive looking into the future of magnets recycling.
Patrick Hypscher: Yeah, for good reason. Thanks.
[00:25:51] Closing and what is next
Patrick Hypscher: This was the final episode in our IFAT series, and I think it was a special one. I was really excited to talk to the founders of these four startups. If you want to learn more about them, we will have the links to all four companies in the show notes. The next series will start at IFAT too. We will cover the topic of textiles and EPR. So until then, please make sure that you drive a profitable circular economy and please don’t forget, the most abundant renewable resource is your imagination.
Patrick Hypscher: My name is Patrick Hypscher, and this is Circularity.fm, the podcast about understanding, building, and managing circular business models.