changeadminIn the first week of September 2025, the Indian government had approved a ₹1,500 crore incentive scheme for critical mineral recycling. The schemes, part of the National Critical Mineral Mission, aim to provide a prudent approach to ensuring near-term supply chain sustainability.
Critical materials form the crucial supply chain for emerging sectors of the clean energy and mobility transition, as well as advanced technologies and strategic sectors such as electronics, defence, and space.
A month later, in October, the Ministry of Mines issued detailed scheme guidelines following stakeholder consultations. The application process for the Incentive Scheme has started, with the scheme being rolled out on 2nd October 2025. The stakeholders have appreciated the fast roll-out of the Scheme, and are actively engaged with the Ministry.
The eligible feedstocks under the critical minerals recycling scheme include e-waste, spent lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), and other scrap, such as catalytic converters from end-of-life vehicles. According to estimates, the annual generation of e-waste in the country is 1.75 million tons (mt), and spent LIBs are about 60 kilo tons (kt).
To increase the availability of feedstock and waste products, over the next 4-5 years, many steps are being explored, including the elimination of customs duty on LIB scrap under the Union Budget 2025-26, which will facilitate imports.
Feedstock availability is also being addressed through the formalisation of collection under the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) framework and the integration of waste into the recycling ecosystem, supported by concerned government agencies.
Under the EPR framework, E-waste and Battery waste management rules obligate the extraction of specified end-products. Even so, the capacity to process black mass/powder is limited in the country, so it is exported without first extracting the valuable, critical minerals embedded therein.
The Scheme will provide an incentive for the recycling value chain, which is involved in the actual extraction of critical minerals, rather than the value chain involved only in black mass production.
Critical mineral recycling will help bring more recyclers, especially upstream entities such as dismantlers, crushers, and shredders, into the formal system. Many private recycling companies already run efficient scrap collection systems.
There are very few players in the country involved in R4 recycling, i.e., end-to-end battery scrap-to-metal extraction. While some of these players may take an interest in their expansion plans, the Scheme as such envisages broader participation to enlist a greater number of beneficiaries. The total incentive has thus been capped at ₹50 crores for prominent recyclers and at ₹25 crores for small recyclers.
The Scheme will help augment recycling capacity through processes such as hydrometallurgy. Proven end-to-end recycling technologies are available in the country.
Premier institutes like IITs, CSIR and other R&D laboratories have developed and demonstrated indigenous capabilities in metal extraction, recycling and purification.
Additionally, the government has recognised more than a half-dozen institutes, such as the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore and the Centre for Materials for Electronics Technology (C-MET), Hyderabad, as Centres of Excellence (CoE) under the National Critical Mineral Mission (NCMM).
The CoEs will undertake innovative and transformational research to strengthen and advance India’s science and technology capability in the area of critical minerals.
Some of these institutes also provide training in mineral processing, beneficiation, and extractive metallurgy. The beneficiaries can meet any skill requirement under the Scheme through a necessary institutional tie-up.
The Ministry of Mines has been actively engaging with the private sector to build sufficient capacity in the country to fully utilise e-waste and recover various critical minerals within a few years.
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