This step will strengthen supply chains for battery manufacturing, electric mobility, energy storage and clean-energy technologies
The Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) has recently announced a ban on the export of lithium-ion battery black mass. By making this ban the government is allowing to create greater availability of critical minerals for domestic recycling and refining.
According to the notification, waste and scrap of primary cells, primary batteries and electric accumulators, including spent cells and batteries that are unsorted and do not contain lead, cadmium or mercury, are among the materials. It specifically mentions lithium-ion battery black mass, a powdery material, which is generated during the shredding of end-of-life lithium-ion batteries and battery manufacturing waste.
Black mass includes recoverable quantities of critical minerals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel and manganese, which are important for manufacturing electric vehicle batteries, energy storage systems, electronics and renewable energy technologies.
The agenda behind this restriction is to retain this secondary resource within India and ensure adequate feedstock availability for domestic battery recycling and critical mineral recovery facilities. According to the government, inadequate feedstock availability has prevented the country’s growing battery recycling and refining capacity from being fully utilised. In some instances, domestic recyclers have also had to import black mass to meet their processing requirements, despite the availability of battery waste generated within the country.
The government expects that by prohibiting exports, the utilisation of domestic recycling and refining units would improved, while fresh investments and job opportunities in the sector . This initiative may also increase the domestic recovery of lithium, cobalt, nickel and other critical minerals, reducing India’s dependence on imports and the associated foreign exchange outflow.
This step will strengthen supply chains for battery manufacturing, electric mobility, energy storage and clean-energy technologies. It also enables the country’s circular economy and urban mining efforts by extracting valuable materials from discarded batteries instead of relying entirely on primary mineral extraction.
It is a boost to the government’s National Critical Mineral Mission (NCMM), which has a ₹1,500 crore incentive scheme. The agenda of this scheme is to develop domestic recycling capacity for the separation and production of critical minerals from secondary sources, including battery waste and electronic waste.
