Making mining a force for good.
Still Bright is building a new way to recover more value from copper ore while reducing the environmental liabilities that make mining harder to permit, operate, and support.
Copper demand is rising, driven by electrification, AI and data-center growth, and aging infrastructure, while new supply remains slow, expensive and difficult to permit. At the same time, existing mines leave behind valuable copper and co-products. Still Bright is developing a different path. It aims to recover more value from the ore already being mined, manage challenging elements more effectively, and create a stronger economic and environmental foundation for the communities that host mining.
The world needs more copper. Existing mines need to do more with what they already have.
global refined copper usage
(in metric tons)
49m
25m
2021
2030
(projected)
The current state of copper
significant copper reserves
where ~70% of copper is smelted
$3b
of unrefined copper is exported from the U.S. annually for refining overseas
2nd
The U.S. is the 2nd largest importer of refined copper products
Mining works better when the host community benefits from the start.
Still Bright calls this community-positive mining. The idea is simple. A mine should create durable value for the people and places that host it. Full-value recovery is the economic engine behind that promise. By recovering more of what is valuable and converting what would otherwise be an environmental and operating liability into usable value, mines can create stronger local outcomes while improving project economics and continuity.
Recover more from copper ore.
Leave less value behind.
RACER is Still Bright's copper-processing platform. It uses electrochemistry and hydrometallurgy to recover copper from rougher concentrate feedstocks at low temperature and ambient pressure, typically in minutes rather than the months or years heap leaching requires. Across multiple feedstocks tested to date, Still Bright has recovered approximately 98–99% of the copper entering its process.
RACER is also designed to recover additional value from metals such as molybdenum and gold that can otherwise go unpaid or unrecovered, and to convert sulfur into elemental sulfur and other sulfur co-products rather than the waste ponds conventional processing leaves behind.
99%
Up to 99% copper recovery from rougher concentrate feedstocks tested to date.
A Still Bright future:
Make more of the orebody economic
RACER is designed to unlock value from complex or depleted feedstocks that conventional processing may leave behind, extending what a mine can produce from resources it already has.
More value per orebody, today and tomorrow
Extracting more value now is what makes the next stage possible. Recovering co-products like molybdenum and gold today builds toward a future where a larger share of the world's copper comes from what's already been mined, not new extraction.
Processing copper at home
RACER is designed to bring copper processing back onshore, reducing dependence on smelting capacity concentrated overseas and rebuilding a capability the United States has largely lost.
Turning liabilities into local value
Elements like sulfur, which conventional processing sends to waste, can instead become usable co-products such as fertilizer inputs — supporting the communities and economies that host mining.
In the news
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This startup wants to clean up the copper industry
Have an orebody that is leaving value behind?
Still Bright is working with mining companies to test feedstocks, quantify the recovery opportunity, and evaluate where RACER can improve project economics. If you are dealing with complex concentrate, unpaid co-products, processing constraints, or high capital requirements, we should talk. Based on our current models, we should be able to increase your cashflows by at least 10%.
