Attero to invest Rs 300 crore to ramp up lithium-ion battery recycling capacity

Within a week of expanding its partnership with MG Motor India to recycle EV batteries, one of India’s largest electronic waste recycling companies Attero Recycling has announced plans to invest Rs 300 crore into lithium-ion recycling over the next nine months.

Founded in 2008, by Rohan Gupta and Nitin Gupta, the company claims it is India’s only cleantech organisation that is focused on producing sustainable materials such as cobalt, tin, nickel, copper, silver and gold completing the circular economy value chain.

For processing e-waste, Attero Recycling has a state-of-the-art recycling plant in Roorkee, Uttarakhand. To ramp up its operations, Attero Recycling is also expanding its footprint via the franchisee route, which will enable the company to double its capacity by the end of 2022.

The company says the funds will be utilised to ramp up the company’s lithium-ion battery recycling capacity by 11 times to 11,000 metric tonnes. At present, Attero Recycling has a lithium-ion battery recycling capacity of 1,000 metric tonnes per annum. As per estimates, India is presently generating more than 50,000 tonnes of lithium-ion battery waste every year. Through this enhanced capacity, Attero Recycling envisions to capture 22 percent of the total potential market size by October 2022.

As India focus grows on EVs, lithium-ion battery waste is expected to grow by 40-80% year on year. In the bid to help India manage the growing lithium-ion battery waste and transition from a linear to a circular economy, Attero Recycling says it has partnered with various car makers and electronic companies for the collection of end-of-the-life batteries and recycling them in a sustainable manner. The company claims it currently has 90% market share of automobiles and electronic OEMs.

Nitin Gupta, CEO and co-founder, Attero Recycling said, “Recycling lithium-ion batteries is the need of the hour to ensure sustainable development of our country. Almost 30% of the value for lithium-ion batteries comes from metals that make it and India does not have any reserves of cobalt or lithium. By ensuring that the recycling infrastructure in the country can grow and meet India's current local demand, we want to make India Atamnirbhar in battery materials.”

Attero says it uses avant-garde recycling technology that is NASA approved to extract pure gold, silver, copper, aluminium and palladium which is then sold back to the market. It is already recycling all kinds of lithium-ion batteries ranging from a cell phone all the way to an electric bus with weights ranging from 30 grams to 780 kgs to extract cobalt, lithium from lithium-ion batteries to ensure the completion of the circular economy value chain.

The firm is also in the process of increasing its e-waste capacity through franchise route. In the future, it is already in process of setting up plants to recycle e-waste at 14 other locations by end-2022. These plants will be strategically located across the country and will enable Attero Recycling to enhance its e-waste management capacity to 300,000 metric tonnes per year.