Photo: Sofia Med
Bulgarian metallurgical company Sofia Med plans to build and operate an innovative industrial copper recycling plant in Sofia under its SVAROG project, the company said on October 23.
The project has successfully passed the evaluation stage of the European Union Innovation Fund's 2025 Net-Zero Technologies call and has been invited to proceed to grant preparation. The total planned investment amounts to approximately EUR 19.49 million, including a proposed EUR 6.20 million grant from the Innovation Fund.
The next-generation copper recycling facility will be built at Sofia Med's existing site in the Bulgarian capital.
The SVAROG project aims to process currently underutilized, low-grade and mixed copper scrap into copper with a purity of more than 99.9%. According to the company, the facility will recover valuable materials that are currently used mainly in lower-value applications or exported outside Europe.
The plant will employ advanced sensor-based cold sorting technologies and artificial intelligence to optimize the combustion-based refining process.
Designed to process approximately 30,000 tonnes of complex copper scrap annually, the facility will supply recycled copper directly to Sofia Med's existing foundry, replacing a significant proportion of the primary copper cathodes currently used in production.
The company said replacing primary copper cathodes with recycled copper was central to the project's expected environmental benefits, as primary copper production generates substantially higher greenhouse gas emissions than the processing and refining of secondary copper scrap.
According to project estimates, SVAROG is expected to avoid approximately 1.16 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions over its first ten years of operation.
The investment is expected to increase Bulgaria's industrial recycling capacity and help retain valuable copper resources in Europe by promoting their reuse as raw materials in European manufacturing, the company said.
Sofia Med operates on global markets, supplying rolled and extruded products made from copper and copper alloys.