Electric vehicles are being sold very fast in India, but when the batteries of these vehicles become old, they are no longer thrown away. The same old battery is being used to provide electricity to homes. In some villages, electricity backup is being made and in some places mobile towers are being operated. Its market in India is expected to be around $530 million by 2026 and can reach $200 million by 2034. That means old batteries are now turning into a big business.
Now many companies in India have started doing this work. These companies collect old batteries, examine them and then decide whether to reuse them or extract essential materials from them. Both small and big companies are engaged in this work and their number is increasing every year.
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Which companies are there?
Loham Cleantech (Greater Noida): This company started in 2018 and is today the largest company in this sector in India. This company does about 70 percent of the work of reusing batteries in the entire country. Its capacity is currently 20,000 tonnes per annum and the target is to take it to 50,000 tonnes by the end of 2026. The company has worked closely with big institutions like Mercedes Benz and IIT Kanpur. So far it has raised around Rs 1,057 crore and its annual income is Rs 835 crore. The company is now expanding its operations in UAE also.
Atero Recycling (Noida): This company was started in 2007 by Nitin Gupta and Rohan Gupta. It is India’s largest electronic waste management company and its unique technology recovers more than 98% of lithium, cobalt, nickel and graphite from old batteries. About 90 percent of the car manufacturing companies including Tata Motors, MG and Hyundai are working with it. The company has also announced an investment of Rs 2,000 crore in the next three years and is also preparing to enter the stock market.
BATX Energies (Gurugram): This company was started in 2020 by Utkarsh Singh and Vikrant Singh. It both manufactures batteries and also recycles old batteries. Recently it has received an amount of about Rs 41 crore. The company says that reusing one EV battery is equivalent to reusing 13,000 mobile phone batteries. That is, how big a benefit a battery can provide.
Recyclers (Palghar): After 13 years of hard work, this company has created its own special technology through which metals like cobalt, nickel and manganese are extracted from old batteries with more than 90 percent purity. Big companies like Bajaj Auto, Ather Energy, Hero MotoCorp and Tata Motors are working with it.
ACE Green Recycling (Noida): This company recycles batteries without any pollution. It has announced to build India’s largest lithium battery recycling facility in Mundra, Gujarat with a capacity of 10,000 tonnes per annum. This place is near a big port so it will be easy to bring and take batteries.
Gravita India (Jaipur): Along with making old batteries reusable, this company also runs a digital machine through which complete information about the battery is kept, where it came from and where it went. Apart from vehicles, this company also works in telecom, energy storage and electronics sectors.
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What will happen next?
The more electric vehicles are sold, the more old batteries will be available. Currently, India can recycle about 60,000 tonnes of batteries every year and from this the material required for about one lakh vehicles can be extracted. Experts believe that this will be one of the fastest growing businesses in India in the coming years.
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