News
Inge Hofkens elected new President of European Metals
Hamburg | Thursday, July 2, 2026
Inge Hofkens, COO Multimetal Recycling at Aurubis, has been elected President of European Metals for a two-year term, effective July 1, following the conclusion of the maximum four-year term of outgoing President Evangelos Mytilineos.
Recycling capacity is increasingly a question of industrial competitiveness for Europe. While copper recycling is an area where European players are already comparatively strong, several other strategic metals are recovered at much lower rates today — a gap that has less to do with available technology than with the framework around it: permitting timelines, how secondary raw materials are classified and regulated, energy costs for processing, and whether high-value scrap stays within European supply chains at all. These are exactly the kinds of questions the European Metals Committee works on, which is where Hofkens' operational experience in multimetal recycling adds a practical perspective.
Recycling is no longer just a sustainability topic for Europe's metals industry — it's central to how competitive and independent we can be.
Inge Hofkens
Chief Operations Officer Multimetal Recycling
“Recycling is no longer just a sustainability topic for Europe's metals industry — it's central to how competitive and independent we can be. The technology to recover far more of Europe's metals already exists. Now the right framework conditions need to follow. That's the conversation I want to help drive as President of European Metals," says Hofkens.
Few in the industry bring Hofkens’ experience to that conversation. She started her career in 1993 as a scrap purchaser at Metallo in Beerse, working her way through purchasing, processing, trading, sales, and metal price hedging before moving into business strategy and, eventually, Metallo's Chief Sales Officer role. When Metallo was acquired by Aurubis, she led much of the integration herself, then became Managing Director of Aurubis Olen before joining the Aurubis Executive Board in 2023.
Aurubis' own recycling network shows what that experience looks like in practice: ASPA in Beerse and BOB in Olen process complex secondary raw materials in Belgium, and CRH (Complex Recycling Hamburg) adds roughly 30,000 tonnes of additional capacity at the company's Hamburg site. With Aurubis Richmond in the U.S. — the company's first international greenfield project of this kind, designed for up to 180,000 tonnes of complex recycling material once fully ramped up — that experience now extends well beyond Europe too. It's this operational background Hofkens brings to her new role, giving a growing part of Aurubis' business a more direct voice in shaping the European framework conditions it needs to scale.
About European Metals
European Metals is the association representing the companies and associations that make up Europe's non-ferrous metals value chain, from mining and refining through to downstream use and high-quality recycling. It advocates for a secure, sustainable, and resource-efficient metals industry, and for the regulatory and industrial conditions Europe needs to build a more circular and competitive metals sector.
Christoph Tesch
Head of Corporate Communications
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Meino Hauschildt
Manager Corporate Communications, Spokesperson
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