A model where companies lease critical minerals instead of selling them

Rapidly rising demand for copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt, silver and other critical metals driven by wind, solar, batteries and grids risks outstripping known reserves and faces bottlenecks from declining ore quality, long mine lead times and concentrated exports. Rather than relying on new extraction alone, Metals‑as‑a‑Service (MaaS) treats in‑use metal as a recoverable resource: an owner retains title and leases the metal to users, who pay predictable operating charges instead of upfront capital. That servitization model aligns incentives to recover and recycle high‑quality secondary feedstock from the “urban mine,” reduces buyer exposure to price volatility, converts CAPEX into OPEX for project developers and equipment makers, and gives primary producers recurring revenues and longer customer relationships.

Operationalizing MaaS requires financial and accounting infrastructure: a special purpose vehicle (SPV) can house a Metal Bank that owns pooled metal inventory, enables lifecycle integration, and creates tradable, securitized lease cashflows for investors. Making it bankable depends on mapping stocks and flows (dynamic material flow analysis) to locate recoverable metal, valuing and acquiring assets, standardizing contracts, and designing financing structures that mobilize capital at scale. Practical pilots with miners, manufacturers, recyclers and investors have been used to refine these tools and demonstrate commercial viability.