ZEREP MATERIALS
Turning America's Metal Waste into Critical Mineral Supply
ZEREP Materials refines critical and specialty metals from mining waste, industrial byproducts, and end-of-life materials, building the domestic processing capacity America's supply chain is missing.
A Supply Chain Problem Hiding in Plain Sight
The United States produces less than a quarter of the refined rare earth metals its own industries need. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of tons of metal-bearing waste sit stockpiled or landfilled—mining tailings, industrial byproducts, spent materials—because processing it has never been cheap enough or easy enough to bother with.
What We Do
Refine Waste Into Finished Metal
ZEREP Materials procures metal-bearing waste and refines it into finished, sellable metal—using a low-cost, closed-loop process built to capture a broad range of metals from a broad range of sources: mining tailings, industrial byproducts, ore, and electronic waste.
We don't ask waste generators to install new equipment or change how they operate. We take the waste many of them are already paying to manage, and turn it into something valuable.
How it Works
Source
We acquire feedstock directly—mining tailings, industrial byproducts, ore, and e-waste can all work as input streams.
Process
A closed-loop electrochemical process extracts metal without the waste, energy use, or chemical hazards of conventional refining.
Separate
The recovered material is separated into distinct, sellable metal streams, turning them into finished products a buyer can use.
Sell
Finished metal ships to manufacturers across electronics, industrial, automotive, and defense supply chains.
Why This Matters Now
The U.S. is structurally dependent on foreign processing for the metals its economy runs on—even where the raw ore is mined domestically. Closing that gap is both an economic opportunity and a national security priority, and it starts with processing capacity, not just new mines.
About
Built by Someone Who's Done This Before
Laura Perez founded ZEREP Materials after years spent building hydrometallurgy metal powder and other R&D processes from the ground up—including building up a lab from scratch as the sole employee of an early-stage startup. That background spans metal powder synthesis for microelectronics, industrial process fluid formulation for steel mills and metalworking plants, manufacturing R&D and design-for-manufacturing for large scale production, and an early career in solar cell metallization and semiconductor research.
@zerepalaura
Why ZEREP?
It's Perez reversed—representing the methodology of reverse-engineering from desired outcomes instead of forward-iterating from what's worked before. This type of broader systems thinking underlies everything we do at ZEREP Materials.
@ZEREPMaterials
Let's Talk
Whether you're a potential feedstock partner, an advisor, or someone looking to join early—reach out.
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