For the second time this year, the Hamburg-based copper manufacturer and recycling specialist Aurubis has been the victim of an alleged metal theft. The damage this time could amount to a three-digit million amount. Only in June did it become known that a gang of thieves had stolen intermediate products containing precious metals from the company for years, generating proceeds of around 20 million euros. It is very likely that there is no connection between the two cases, said an Aurubis spokesman on Friday. “But we can’t rule it out with absolute certainty.”
The spokesman did not want to make any assumptions about the possible group of perpetrators. In view of the “high standards customary in the industry” for security, “the extent to which internal perpetrators are involved” will also be examined. It is still unclear which metals are involved in detail. Since the recycling sector is affected, valuable precious metals can also be involved in addition to copper, the spokesman said.
Aurubis is a leading company for the recycling of copper, precious metals and other non-ferrous metals, which are hidden in a wide variety of metal-bearing consumer and durable goods such as electronic devices. “We have specialized in extracting valuable metals from even the most complex recycling raw materials, reprocessing them and reintroducing them into the material cycle,” says a company presentation. In addition to copper, lead, nickel and zinc, recycling also produces gold and silver or platinum and palladium.
On Thursday evening, Aurubis announced that when checking the metal stock, “considerable deviations from the target stock as well as deviations from special samples of certain deliveries of input materials in the recycling area were found”.