In the last decade, there has been a continuous development in the secondary raw materials sector - accompanied or driven by changes and upheavals in the secondary raw materials market - towards highly specialised processing companies. There are many reasons for this specialisation. Without claiming completeness, the increasingly stringent legal frameworks, but also the diversity and heterogeneity of the residual materials to be processed in our affluent and industrial society and the increased demands on the secondary raw material products produced may be mentioned. Metal composites pose a particular challenge regarding the complex tasks and the thereof resulting process pluralism for their processing as well as the very flexible processing methods and plants to be designed. "Off the peg" processing concepts thus inevitably lead to undesired deviations regarding the required sorting quality or energy efficiency of the processing plant. This prompts many plant operators - above all those in the field of metal composite processing - to subject their processing plants to a continuous critical review and to intervene proactively and innovatively in the process and procedure design to produce marketable products. Since neither legal nor technical regulations for sampling and analysis were available for the metallic composites examined in this dissertation, firstly a sampling and analysis plan was developed for metallic composites and the fractions processed from them, and the sequence of further analyses was defined. Subsequently, in close cooperation with well-known machine and plant manufacturers, most of which are based in Austria, a pilot processing plant was designed, built and commissioned at the Ybbs an der Donau site. This pilot processing plant will enable Schaufler GmbH not only to adapt to the rapidly changing legal frameworks in the future, but also to take on the role of an innovation driver in the processing of metallic composites. With the present work, taking into account the state of the art and on the basis of a comprehensive characterisation of the residual materials to be processed or the fractions that arise in the process, some optimisation potentials for the processing of metallic composites were identified. On the one hand by optimising established processing aggregates, and on the other hand by developing innovative processing methods, as well as some limits of what is technically feasible and economically viable were explored. Innovative processing concepts were developed for the following residual materials and their suitability for use was evaluated: - Dusts from the processing of metallic composites - Contaminated iron scrap - Cable scrap