Choose your reading language
We'll remember it for every article.
India's Lithium Rush: Private Firms Forge New Supply Chain, Turning Battery Scrap into Gold
A wave of private investment is rapidly building an end-to-end lithium supply chain in India, from overseas mines to domestic refineries and massive recycling plants. For the Indian scrap industry, this isn't just news—it's the birth of a new, high-value market.
For decades, India has been almost 100% dependent on imports for lithium-ion batteries, with nearly three-quarters of them coming from China. This has resulted in a massive import bill that crossed $3 billion in the 2024-25 financial year. Now, a group of ambitious Indian companies is moving to break that dependency.
Recent announcements show a three-pronged strategy taking shape with lightning speed: private firms are acquiring lithium mines abroad, building refineries in India to process the raw material, and massively scaling up "urban mining" to recover critical minerals from battery scrap.
What is changing
The game is changing on three fronts simultaneously:
-
Mining Overseas: An Indian battery-materials company has begun mining lithium overseas, dispatching its first ore shipment recently. This marks the first time an Indian firm has started such operations abroad, with plans to refine the material at a new facility in India.
-
Refining in India: A domestic lithium-refining firm is investing around $200 million to build a major lithium refinery in India. This plant will process spodumene—a lithium-bearing ore—into roughly 30,000 tonnes of battery-grade lithium carbonate per year, a crucial missing link in the domestic supply chain.
-
Recycling at Scale: At the other end, major recyclers are making big moves. One large organised recycler is expanding its Li-ion battery recycling capacity from 16,000 tonnes to 60,000 tonnes per year. Another organised recycler is also scaling up and has secured a license to import battery scrap from neighbouring countries and beyond, targeting its first imports as early as October 2026.