Independent research
Recycling reduces environmental impacts, research shows.
Furberg, Arvidsson and Molander, writing in Journal of Cleaner Production 209 (2019), found reductions of 22 to 100 percent across the metal categories they assessed.
Industries · Mining
Mining equipment recycling,
from site to gate
Worn drill string, ground engaging tools, plant wear liners and workshop tooling from WA mine sites, from a contractor’s ute load through to a shutdown-scale clearance. We sort each load by alloy, weigh it at the Malaga yard and price it by grade and material content.
Mining · WA-wide
Why specialty mining recovery
Protect the alloy value
in drill string.
A general scrap yard often prices a worn carbide button bit and a bent length of angle iron the same way: by weight, mixed. Mining sites generate a disproportionate share of high-value alloy, tungsten carbide in the drill string, manganese and chrome alloy in mill liners and crusher wear parts, and that value gets flattened every time it’s sold into a mixed load.
We sort every batch by alloy family before it’s priced, so carbide, wear steel and non-ferrous cable each get valued on what they are. This matters most at shutdown, when a laydown yard or a workshop bench accumulates months of worn tooling in one go and the gap between a mixed rate and a sorted rate compounds across the whole load.
For the background on why worn tooling still carries recoverable value, see Why your mining drill bits are worth more than you think and Goldfields geology: why local rock makes drill bits more valuable.
Whether a bin sits on site during a shutdown is decided case by case, weighing the relationship, location, material and expected weight; bins are generally set up for repeat customers rather than a one-off pickup. A site walkthrough ahead of a shutdown or laydown clear-out is free but needs to be booked, since the team is not always at the yard.
A quotation on a shutdown-scale load carries its own expiry, typically 24 or 72 hours depending on the material and market, so ask for it close to the clear-out window rather than months ahead.
Mining · WA-wide
What we take off a mine site
Six streams.
One gate.
Drill string, GET, wear liners and workshop tooling stay in separate material streams before pricing.
01 / Drill string
Drill string and consumables
Carbide button bits, tricone and PDC bits, drill rods, subs and threaded couplings straight off the rig.
Button bits Carbide button bits from DTH and top-hammer rigs. Worn or unused.
Tricone & PDC bits Worn rotary tricones, PDC and roller cone bits with carbide inserts.
Drill rods & subs Drill steel, rod strings, sub adapters, threaded couplings, drift rods.
02 / GET
Ground engaging tools (GET)
Bucket teeth, adapters, blades and wear shrouds off excavators, loaders and dozers.
Bucket teeth & adapters Off excavators, loaders and dozers.
Blades Blades off dozers and loaders.
Wear shrouds Wear shrouds off excavators and dozers.
03 / Plant wear
Plant wear liners
Mill liners, chute liners and jaw plates in manganese and chrome alloy.
Mill liners Manganese and chrome-alloy mill liners.
Chute liners Chute liners in manganese and chrome alloy.
Jaw plates Jaw plates in manganese and chrome alloy.
04 / Workshop
Workshop tooling
End mills, inserts, dies and any carbide or high-speed steel tooling reaching the end of its working life on site.
End mills & cutters Carbide end mills and cutters.
Inserts & dies Carbide inserts, dies and punches.
HSS tooling High-speed steel tooling at the end of its working life.
05 / Shutdown
Shutdown and turnaround accumulation
The bulk of worn tooling and wear metal a site collects over a planned outage.
Worn drill string Rods, subs and bits pulled during the outage.
Wear liners and GET Liners, teeth and shrouds swapped at shutdown.
Workshop tooling Inserts, cutters and HSS cleared from the crib.
06 / Laydown yard
Laydown yard clearing
A yard that's built up material over months or years, cleared in one pass.
Mixed drill string Bits, rods and subs sorted by type.
Wear parts and liners GET and plant liners graded by alloy.
Unsorted alloy parts Carbide, HSS and specialty alloy pulled from the pile.
The process
Four steps.
One gate.
Whether it’s a ute load or a multi-truck shutdown clearance, the sequence is the same.
- 01 / Step Received Send photos of what's on site, or call ahead if it's shutdown-scale. We'll give an indicative view of what you're holding before anything moves.
- 02 / Step Sorted and weighed Every batch is broken down by alloy family and weighed on scale before it's priced.
- 03 / Step Priced Value is set against grade, alloy content and current reference pricing, not a flat mixed-scrap rate. See the drill bit pricing page for how that works on carbide specifically.
- 04 / Step Paid Once you've signed off the batch record, payment is arranged.
Related industries
Mining adjacent.
Same yard.
Our standard
What stays the same
on every batch.
Whether it is one drum or a shutdown clearance, every load follows the same weighing, sorting, documentation and settlement process at Malaga.
Our standard, on every batch
- Weighed
Every load is weighed on scale before it’s priced, so the number you’re paid on matches the number on the docket.
- Sorted by alloy
Drill string, GET and wear liners are separated and assessed by material type.
- Documented
A batch record travels with every load, useful alongside your own site record-keeping.
- Free bin, free freight
There’s no cost for the bin or the freight. The bin travels back to us on an existing backload run rather than on freight we charge for, which matters at shutdown when you need a bin on the ground before the tooling starts accumulating. The full bin moves on your existing backload; we don’t run a skip truck to pick it up.
Why it matters for tungsten
Tungsten stays in circulation instead of landfill.
Tungsten is a critical mineral with a finite global supply, and most of what a mine site retires is still valuable alloy.
Note
A company-reported energy and CO2 figure
Sandvik, press release 14 March 2023: secondary tungsten production uses 70% less energy and produces 64% less CO2 than primary extraction. Sandvik runs a competing buyback programme, so treat this as company data, not an independent benchmark.
Batch records
A record for every batch.
Weight, alloy grade and destination are logged for each load off your site, useful documentation to sit behind your own reporting without you building the audit trail yourself. That matters most at shutdown, when what leaves your site needs accounting for as much as what’s inside the fence.
Mining shutdown coming up?
Get your site tooling
sorted before pricing.
Shutdown or laydown yard clearing coming up? Send photos of what’s on site and we’ll give you an indicative view of what it’s worth, including how the free bin works.
Malaga, WA · Free bin and freight, on backload · Priced by grade and alloy content