Modern Mining is preparing to commercialise its Greenville, North Carolina e-waste plant, which shreds, gravity-separates and then uses “aqueous purification” chemistry to recover gold, silver, palladium and copper without large-scale incineration or new smelting capacity. The move comes as President Trump’s July use of the Defense Production Act enables export restrictions on industrial waste containing critical minerals, aiming to keep higher-than-ore-grade electronic scrap within US borders. Modern Mining plans a distributed network of modular plants—targeting roughly one new facility per year over five years—to build a domestic secondary-metals supply chain alongside conventional mining.

Gold for December delivery on Comex rose 0.3% to $4,435/oz after rebounding from $4,365.50 and nearing $4,454.60 intraday, as softer July US inflation cut money-market odds of a September Fed hike to about one in three from over 40% a week earlier. Spot gold steadied around $4,353/oz and silver futures at $65.13/oz left silver down about 8% year-to-date, while BMI now expects gold to average $4,400/oz in 2026 with the dollar index in a 98–102 range. Precious metals miners have surged, with Hecla, Eldorado, Equinox, Coeur, Agnico Eagle and Newmont up 26–32% over ten sessions against an 8% move in gold.

Copper is trading near a record $14,500/t as the LME August contract’s premium over September blows out to $370/t and cash-to-three-month spreads hit $434/t amid a 42-day drawdown in exchange stocks to 204,975 t, nearly half already earmarked for withdrawal. Traders are diverting metal to the US ahead of potential 15–30% tariffs on refined copper and to China as smelters cut output following the DRC’s concentrate export ban, while Chilean supply remains constrained around 5.5 Mt/y and Indonesia’s 342,000 t/y Gresik smelter is offline. BMI now pegs 2026 prices near $13,500/t with “strong upside risks”, as shorts on the LME face the prospect of a warehouse bidding war.