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To make one wedding ring, one needs to sort through about 50 tons of material, says Trisector CEO Arnout Lugtmeijer, about the equivalent of two large trucks loaded with rocks, almost all of which are discarded in the process. This approach to resource extraction leaves behind considerable by-products.
Such is the case in Estonia’s northeastern Ida-Viru County, too, where the mining industry has historically tended to focus primarily on extracting target minerals. At the same time, the management of by-products and waste materials has received less attention. Indeed, these tailings are so colossal that they’ve become something of a tourist attraction, and one can ski on sections in winter or climb to the top to snap landscape photos.
But there’s value to be extracted from Estonia’s mining and oil shale waste too, Lugtmeijer believes, and with the help of the best technology around for mineral extraction, as well as partnerships with some of Europe’s best institutes, Lugtmeijer and his company Trisector aim to do just that.
“We are living in a society that only consumes virgin materials but is looking for replacement materials,” says Lugtmeijer. “We want to be able not to have to mind or to make new holes in the ground,” he says. “We’d rather use the waste material from mining to generate the minerals that are used in the products we use daily.” This is the concept behind Trisector.
Tons and tons
Trisector focuses exclusively on the valorisation of mine tailings in Ida-Viru County — large deposits of unprocessed rock material remaining from historical mining activity. While the oil shale industry in the region has also generated substantial ash from power production and slags or semi-cokes from shale oil refining, these are not within Trisector’s current scope.
According to Lugtmeijer, Eesti Energia, internationally operating as Enefit, runs both an underground and an open-pit oil shale mine in Ida-Viru County. Over more than 50 years, the underground mine alone has generated around 140 million tons of mine tailings. “This is the material we have started to investigate for reuse,” he says. “There are technologies available that make this possible.”
Trisector plans to extract from the waste raw minerals used in everyday construction, road building and agroforestry applications, as well as functional fillers used in plastics, paper, paints and sealants. Given the site’s location near railway and port connections, and adjacency to a large nearby market in Finland, Sweden, and elsewhere in Northern Europe, the company hopes to create wealth out of an untapped resource while helping to reduce Estonia’s waste.
Planning a plant
For Lugtmeijer, it’s an interesting challenge. Originally from Holland, he came to Estonia more than 30 years ago to manage the assets of a wealthy Dutch family. Still, he got involved in a project developing an oil terminal in the country. “The intention was to stay one or two years, but, as usual, things changed,” he recalls.
He helped guide that company into becoming one of the largest terminal operators in the region, gaining expertise in both rail and port logistics. After selling the facility in 2019, he took a breather and headed to the south of France, where he waited out the COVID-19 pandemic. Ever the entrepreneur, he couldn’t stay put and went to work on Estonia’s mineral waste issue.
The company last year received €658,000 from the EU’s Just Transitions Fund to explore the application of its technology, and Lugtmeijer says that its backers have invested €2 million in development. Trisector has also been able to demonstrate to potential clients in the plastics and paper industries, for example, that its recycled materials are of high quality, as good as virgin ones.
The company’s next step is to establish a pilot plant in Ida-Viru County, to develop the continuous processing technology further and produce larger sample volumes for industrial testing. Eesti Energia has expressed interest in participating as a potential co-investor, though no formal commitment has been made, Lugtmeijer stated. Trisector is also in discussions with strategic investors, including those from the raw materials sector. The aim is to complete financing by the end of 2026 or early 2027, enabling construction of the pilot facility, followed by a full-scale production plant targeted for 2028, marking the start of commercial operations.
And there is no reason for Trisector to apply its patented technology and workflows only in Estonia. Instead, the company sees it as the first stepping stone toward creating similar plants for processing mining waste in other regions.
‘Something very special’
But what exactly is Trisector’s technology? On its website, the company describes its process as advanced, unique, and sustainable. Without revealing any trade secrets, Lugtmeijer explains that “there’s no rocket science involved.” All the technologies Trisector uses already exist and are available on the market.
The difference lies in how Trisector has refined and integrated these technologies. “The industry is familiar with several of the technologies we use,” says Lugtmeijer, “but what sets us apart is our novel approach, how we’ve made them work together flawlessly to achieve something entirely new.”
Part of Trisector’s innovation lies in its use of digital tools that allow multiple processing steps, such as material sorting, to work seamlessly together. This integrated approach not only improves efficiency but also helps meet the growing market demand for raw materials with stronger sustainability credentials. Compared to the production of similar conventional products, Trisector claims its processes can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by up to 80 per cent, cut water consumption by half, and lower energy use by nearly one-third.
Chief Digital Officer Mikko Hedman is tasked with Trisector’s data strategy, which will focus on using data-driven insights and digital twin solutions across the organisation to optimise its operations and drive growth. Using a digital twin platform allows Trisector to run simulations of its internal processes and ensure that its technology can be implemented, Lugtmeijer stated.
The company also works closely with several leading technology and research partners, including Tallinn University of Technology; GTK Mintec (part of Geological Survey of Finland), which operates mineral research laboratories and a pilot plant in Finland; and VTT, the Technical Research Centre of Finland. In addition, Trisector collaborates with Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and the Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology in Germany, which Lugtmeijer describes as “the NASA of mineral processing.”
According to him, these partners provide Trisector with exclusive access to certain mineral processing technologies. “They recognise that we’re doing something truly unique,” he said.
