Recycling-tech company could build Weld County plant

DENVER — An unidentified clean-technology company could build a new recycling plant in Weld County. 

The Colorado Economic Development Commission extended an offer Thursday of incentives to the mystery firm, a “critical material extraction and recycling technology company” referred to in Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade documents as Project Dragon, in an effort to lure the facility to Northern Colorado. 

It is the commission’s practice not to identify companies that OEDIT is recruiting until incentives are accepted.

The company behind Project Dragon has “plans for a plant to recycle high-strength magnets, batteries, and other sources to produce raw materials for the clean energy industries. In addition to Colorado, the company is considering Oklahoma,” according to an OEDIT memo. 

Among the company’s considerations for potential plant locations are “logistics for obtaining the critical source materials and other business costs,” OEDIT said. “The company has stated that the cost of doing business in Colorado is becoming prohibitive to their activities, hence their search for facilities elsewhere.”

The Project Dragon firm is “a home-grown Colorado company” with six employees, an OEDIT memo said, and “keeping them here would signal our support of critical recycling companies and maintain Colorado as a competitive location for companies in the intersection of advanced manufacturing, recycling, and energy and natural resource space.”

The EDC approved a tax-incentive offer of $631,508 over eight years. To receive the full credit, the company must create 35 new jobs at an average annual wage of $75,571. Those jobs would include managers, process engineers, plant operators, and supply and chain managers.

Michelle Hadwiger, OEDIT deputy director and director of global business development, told the EDC that financial information provided by Project Dragon “does not support” the company’s ability to create all 35 new jobs, “however the company is forecasted to be EBITDA positive by 2028 and is well-capitalized” thanks to several rounds of venture fundraising. 

Since the tax incentives are performance based, the jobs must be created before credits are issued. That’s why the EDC often approves incentives offers even if OEDIT staffers are dubious about a company’s ability to fulfill their end of the bargain. 

The commission approved incentives in 2023 for a company in a similar industry sector as Project Dragon. Known as Project Molecule, this unnamed company was considering building a waste-to-energy plant in Weld County.

The company behind Project Molecule uses a process called pyrolysis to “convert tires and rubber to diesel fuel, recycled carbon black and clean steel,” OEDIT said when the $663,383 incentives offer was approved two years ago.

It’s unclear whether Project Molecule is expected to eventually come to fruition or the company decided to build the plant elsewhere. 

Other incentives offered Thursday by the EDC for projects in the Boulder Valley and Northern Colorado included $678,732 for Project Skyline2025, a backpack company eyeing the Denver metro area (which includes Broomfield and Boulder counties) for an expansion project that could create 50 jobs; and more than $4.3 million for Project Q Chips, an expansion of a quantum company in Broomfield that could create 195 jobs.

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