Our History
METech Recycling, Inc. has been in business since 1968 and is headquartered in Gilroy, California. The company was founded to recycle precious metal scrap then evolved to recycle electronic components and manufacturing by-products. Over the years, end-of-life electronic equipment, brand, proprietary design, HIPAA and all government compliance protection, secure data destruction and asset management have become the core focus as the business landscape continues to change.
Over the years, METech’s service footprint has grown within the United States operating with facilities in California, Colorado, Utah, North Carolina, and Massachusetts. All our plants are R2 certified in addition to holding other voluntary certifications allowing us to complete the Circle of Excellence assuring best practices in electronics recycling. R2 Certifications include: ISO 14001:2015 (Environment), OHSAS 18001:2007 (Health & Safety), R2:2013 (Responsible Recycling systems).
As a qualified ITAD central, USFCR Certified vendor, SAM.gov, HIPAA Compliant, ANSI Accredited, and an R2 Certified recycling company, we are engaged with large industrial, commercial, and government entities. METech has become close partners to some of the country’s greatest organizations providing sustainable services that produce tangible results year over year for our customers. Our capabilities can handle a large array of materials such as post-consumer electronics, commercial business machines, information technology equipment, manufacturing, medical devices, robotics, telecommunications equipment and much more. Below is the historical timeline of the company.
Metech History Timeline
1875
The Wildberg Brothers facility, (aka Boliden Metech) was a metal reclamation plant which operated in San Francisco between 1907 and 1986. The site was approximately 5 1/2 acres in size. This facility was used as an antimony smelting plant which operated for an unknown duration beginning in 1875.
1907
The Site was purchased in 1907 by the Wildberg Brothers Company who operated a metal reclamation facility. The operations included milling, sampling, assaying of scrap materials, electrolytic deposition of silver, stripping of gold, and copper concentration. Gold, platinum, palladium, silver and copper were recovered as finished products.
1968
RMI traces its origin back to 1968 in Woonsocket, R.I. At that time, Refinemet focused on precious metals and tantalum recovery. Refinemet expanded into electronics recycling by “default” in the late ’70s and early ’80s because customers like AT&T, Burroughs, DEC and IBM had large pieces of equipment that they were retiring.
1980
Wildberg Brothers sold the facility to Refinemet International (RMI) in 1980. RMI primarily used the facility for precious metal scrap processing and refining.
1983
In 1983, shortly after expanding into processing end-of-life electronics, Boliden, a smelting and mining company based in Stockholm, Sweden, purchased RMI and renamed it Boliden Metech. It was during this time that Metech moved the East Coast operation from Woonsocket, RI to Mapleville, RI.
Boliden used the San Francisco facility primarily for precious metal scrap processing but did not engage in refining operations at the Site. Operations conducted onsite consisted of material sorting, sampling, and assaying before the materials were containerized for shipment to Boliden facilities overseas for processing.
1986
Boliden discontinued all operations at the San Francisco site in May 1986. All buildings at the site, with the exception of Building 1, the Office Building, Building 2, the Laboratory; and Buildings 11-12, the Melt Shop, and Mechanical Processing area, were demolished and the business was moved to our current location in Gilroy, CA. Trelleborg, (the parent company of Boliden), later spun off the smelting operations under the name Boliden but retained Metech as a recycling and processing operation.
In 2002 Viking Investment and Asset Management, based in Johannesburg, South Africa, bought Metech.
2005
In 2005 Metech was acquired by MTI Corp and relocated the corporate offices from Mapleville, RI to Worcester, Mass. The company designed a processing line to include shredders and downstream separation equipment.
At this time, Metech also discontinued receiving precious-metals-containing hazardous waste and scaled back its other local precious metals refining businesses that were not adding value to the company’s focus on integrated electronics recycling.
2007
In 2007 Metech was acquired by “Centillion Environment and Recycling Ltd” of Singapore.
In 2008 Centillion purchases “Guaranteed Recycling Xperts” (GRX) with locations in Denver, CO, Salt Lake City, UT and Omaha, NE.
2009
2009 Centillion merges Metech and GRX under the Metech Recycling banner.
In 2012 Centillion was renamed Metech International
2016
In 2016 the Worcester facility was relocated once more to its current location in nearby Clinton, MA. At this time, corporate operations were permanently transferred to the Gilroy, CA facility.
2018
In 2018 Metech Recycling was purchased by First America Metals Group and taken Private.
2021
METech continues operating today with a strong national footprint serving industries such as medical, military, government, education, manufacturing and more. METech understands that very organization has different requirements and goals they want to accomplish for their environmental sustainability and recycling program. Therefore, off the shelf solutions can only go so far.
METech Recycling works directly with you to customize solutions that make your goals come to fruition. The results not only contribute to meeting your environmental goals, our program fosters a positive public viewpoint on your organization while promoting real actions being taken that make a difference. These programs will help protect your brand identity and security while maintaining your regulatory compliance.
Let’s work together and develop a recycling solution for your organization. Connect with us today!