Trace-in-Metal Ltd, a new, unique and resilient method of providing traceability of metals throughout the recycling process, primarily aimed at reducing the incidence of metal theft and lowering its impact on the UK economy. Project type Development

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The Association of Chief Police Officers announced in 2011 that metal theft cost the UK £770million. The British Transport Police (BTP) reported 2000 incidents of metal theft over thesame period with Network Rail estimating the cost to £16 million every year (BTP bulletin).Metal theft is a recognised threat to national infrastructure and has a negative impact on theUK economy. In addition, irreplaceable cultural heritage was being destroyed following wateringress as a result of lead being stolen from roofs. Ecclesiastical Insurance, the main insurerfor the Anglican Church’s over 16000 buildings, had 2500 claims in 2011. Several markingmethods were already being used, but were simply not working as theft of lead from churchroofs and other metals was increasing. A meeting was held in October 2011 by the companyfounders to come up with ideas for a technology that would enable the permanent marking ofmetals that would be traceable back to source even after melting. The starting point wasconcern about lead being stolen from historic buildings and the initial technology wasspecifically developed to combat such theft. Lead, the pliable, soft metal used for roofs, waschosen as the metal to prove the concept with, but with a clear objective to find markingmethods for other metals such as copper and aluminium.The markers aim to contain information that would help scrap metal dealers (SMDs) todifferentiate stolen from legitimately acquired metal, carry information that could be used totrack metal from point of marking, assist law enforcing agencies in prosecuting those eitherstealing or buying stolen metals and also act as a deterrent to theft. To prevent removal bythieves (covert marking) the markers, or identifiers, should be fused in the metal and be asinvisible as possible. We aim to achieve this via a novel air rifle based ballistics fusionprocess that overtly tags the surface of a metal for enhanced retrieval, and detection back tosource.