India Bans Exports of Unsorted Battery Waste to Boost Domestic Recycling
Key Facts
India has banned exports of unsorted battery waste and scrap in a move the Directorate General of Foreign Trade said aims to expand domestic recycling capacity and secure supplies of critical minerals. The decision applies to electric cells, batteries and accumulators that contain no lead, cadmium or mercury, according to a report published by The Economic Times on November 11. It also includes black mass produced from lithium-ion batteries, according to a Business Standard report. The directorate said the goal is to strengthen India’s ability to process these materials domestically while ensuring supplies of lithium, cobalt and nickel. The measure makes unsorted scrap a potential input for India’s recycling industry, at a time when supply chains for delivering recovered materials to factories are still under development.
The ban covers specific types of battery waste, rather than all battery waste. The published report said the measure concerns unsorted cells, batteries and electric accumulators that contain no lead, cadmium or mercury. These limits matter in determining which materials are subject to the restrictions, as the report provides no basis for extending the decision to other categories. The directorate’s stated goal also focuses on recovering critical minerals and developing domestic processing. This means the measure’s direct regulatory impact concerns the outward flow of this specific scrap, while the industrial objective is to make it available to recyclers in India.
Industry data point to a gap between available capacity and actual activity: India had battery recycling capacity of 60,000 tons, but some of it remained unused, according to an earlier Associated Press report. The agency attributed this to supply chains needed to transport recovered materials to factories still being under development. This gap puts securing material flows at the center of the sector’s challenge, alongside having the technical capacity to recycle. The ban is part of an effort to strengthen domestic supplies of processable scrap, in line with the goal announced by the Directorate General of Foreign Trade. The agency’s report, meanwhile, says delivering recovered materials to factories still requires supply-chain development.
India’s battery-waste management policy is based on rules approved by the government in 2022, according to the Associated Press report. Those rules require producers to meet collection and recycling targets that vary by battery type. Restricting exports of unsorted scrap comes within a framework designed to collect materials and channel them into recycling, while the decision adds a focus on the cross-border flow of those materials. More broadly, recycling scrap meets more than 40% of India’s copper and aluminum needs, the same report said. The head of Lohum said the sector aims to reach a similar share for lithium, cobalt and nickel, the metals whose supplies the directorate said the ban is intended to secure.
India is also supporting this effort through an incentive plan for critical-mineral recycling that includes lithium-battery scrap, according to a document published in the official gazette. The document says the plan aims to strengthen economic resilience in critical minerals by increasing domestic capacity and reducing reliance on imports. This places mineral recovery from batteries within broader efforts to build domestic capacity to process critical materials. The plan’s goal overlaps with the directorate’s stated aim of securing lithium, cobalt and nickel supplies, although the two use different tools: incentives for domestic capacity on one hand and restrictions on exports of specific scrap on the other. The effectiveness of directing materials to factories remains tied to the development of supply chains cited in the agency’s report.
Against the backdrop of foreign trade, India’s merchandise trade deficit reached $177.64 billion in April-September of fiscal year 2026-2027, compared with $156.88 billion in the same period of the previous fiscal year, according to Commerce and Industry Ministry data reported by the Press Information Bureau in October. The comparison shows the deficit widened between the two periods, but it concerns cumulative merchandise trade and does not measure the impact of an export decision published in November. October’s trade-balance reading is due on November 16, 2026, with a deficit of $32 billion expected, compared with $30.21 billion in September, according to the Trading Economics calendar. The upcoming reading concerns October, a period before the ban was announced in November. These figures therefore do not measure the results of the decision, which aims to encourage domestic processing and secure supplies of critical minerals.