Customer story: FJ Church & Sons – Scrap Trading Company

FJ Church & Sons is an international scrap trading company who specialize in Non-Ferrous, Catalytic Converters and WEEE materials. Founded in 1887, it’s one of the leading scrap metals companies in the United Kingdom. FJ Church & Sons pioneered the recycling of catalytic converters (cats) and as a consequence has had a leading role in defining this market.

In 2012, FJ Church purchased an Axios WDXRF spectrometer from Malvern Panalytical for the accurate and precise measurement of Platinum, Palladium & Rhodium in the recycling of catalytic converters. Due to this investment FJ Church & Sons were in a leading position to offer their clients both a spot purchasing can price or toll refining terms for customers who wish to gain and manage the most accurate value of platinum group metals.

Brian Kavanagh – Chief Chemist at FJ Church & Sons commented how the Malvern Panalytical brand sells itself, owing to being the only company that manufactures its own X-ray tubes and the expertise of Product Technical Specialist, Andy Scothern, exemplified by the good agreement of the Axios data generated with receiver’s work.

FJ Church uses an App where customers can book and check prices. Customers then send the cats to FJ Church saving the cost of collecting the cats, which are then processed and tested as illustrated by the photographs.  

This market is very money driven. FJ Church approached Malvern Panalytical as to whether a compact benchtop EDXRF analyzer could provide a ready-to-use solution with a sufficient level of accuracy and precision, but also make the sample preparation easier thereby saving time and money. To this end, Malvern Panalytical collaborated with many companies dealing with the recycling of catalytic converters and received typical well-characterized samples from companies in Canada, the USA, South America, UK and Germany. These samples were then converted by Application Specialists at the Competency Centre in Almelo, The Netherlands, using an Epsilon 1 EDXRF spectrometer, to one generic calibration available for the recycling industry.

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