According to reports, the global precious metals e-waste recovery market is predicted to grow at a stable CAGR of 7 per cent, thereby garnering a revenue of $18,645.2 million in the 2022-2030 timeframe. What are the key drivers of this upward trend?

The first growth driver is the expansion of the category itself. Proliferation of electronics, mobile phones, consumer products that have printed circuit boards in them and the battery-based technologies such as electric vehicles is one the primary reasons for the upward trend. The second driver is the changing life cycle of these products. The life cycle of televisions, mobile phones and laptops, etc have now shrunk from decades to years to months.

There is an increase in the production of such products that contain precious and rare metals. Because of their short life cycle, we are also changing them much more frequently than we used to. This results in a tremendous accumulation of electronic waste. The industrial sources of precious metals, base metals and rare earth metals are increasing because of industrial growth. Catalysts are linked right from cracking of crude to the plastic industries to a number of other products that find their way into our lives as consumer goods.

So as the consumer goods grow, the catalyst grows. If speciality chemicals grow, then industrial waste that contains precious metals or base metals or rare metals also grow. As our population grows and our per capita consumption grows, waste thus generated also grows. Hence, by 2030 there will be a significant growth in feedstock from electronic waste and industrial waste bearing precious metals, base metals and rare metals.

How has the precious metal recovery industry grown over the years? Do you expect more players entering into the organised sector?

Unfortunately, across most developing economies, where a bulk of this consumption is happening now, where a bulk of that growth that you say between 2022 and 2030 will come, the recycling activities are done by unorganised players literally in their backyards. And where there are organised players, recycling happens on a small scale. But a combination of regulations, enforcement, corporate programmes and the need for efficiency is driving a shift away from the informal sector to the organised sector. Informal recycling not only results in pollution and health hazards for the people involved, but also in the loss of value, because to capture the last gram of precious metals from the feedstock, advanced technologies are required. It is to be noted that precious metal content in waste or in the feedstock is measured in grams per tonne!

This transition, over the next few years, will drive tremendous growth in this sector. The industry is also contributing to a circular economy. When precious metals are recovered, the reliance on mining is reduced. The recycling process is expected to grow significantly. And that is why we are positive and bullish about the sector.

What is the situation in India with regard to regulations and compliance, and the growth prospect?

Though there are regulations, a large part of the precious metals recovery ecosystem is noncompliant, and unsustainable. There are also economic losses as a lot of resources are just discarded and they don’t reach the recycling process. The interesting aspect is that the same metal that has such a high value when refined and purified, can become contaminants and toxic elements in the environment if not managed properly. In a country such as India it is even more important that recycling gains scale and moves out of the cottages into full fledged industry. The story has started changing and we are seeing that across the country, there is more and more focus on enforcement of environmental regulations. With the increased focus on achieving a circular economy, I am confident that in the coming years, recycling industries will become mainstream.

What are the challenges in recovering precious metals from various sources?

The number one challenge is aggregation itself. We have all accumulated end-of-life electronic materials at our homes and offices. They have gone into the so-called consumption space. Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of opportunity is lost because of this. We have to educate people on how to bring them into the recycling chain.

The second challenge is technology. There is a huge difference between virgin material pricing and recycled material pricing. The cost of environmentally compliant recycling is often higher than the cost of recycling done otherwise. When the material is mined, the environmental cost should also be considered and calculated. Ideally, a mined material should cost more, there should be a tax on it or there should be a subsidy on the recycled material, so that they can compete. The cost of conversion should be economically viable.

What are the new innovations in the industry that are helping to improve process efficiency and quality of metals recovery?

Scale and integration are the two biggest enablers of efficiency. Re Sustainability’s focus is to take all recycling segments into an integrated ecosystem that has a significant scale, and through scale we can drive efficiency. An integrated approach enables the recycling of precious metals, plastic and other materials by way of segregating them systematically. A clear understanding of which feedstock is good for each of these materials will help in improving efficiency. So having an integrated system, where different recycling technologies work together, where the product of one process is the feedstock of another material or another process line should be the focus. With this objective in mind, Re Sustainability is about to commission one of the most advanced precious metals refineries in Hyderabad, India. The objective is to collect feedstock, both industrial and other kinds, from all the parts of the world where we operate and to use the ‘hub and spoke’ model to decentralize disaggregation and dismantling at various locations. But all the high potential precious metal waste will come to one centralized location, where the necessary metals are recovered through all the possible methods of refining, including granulation and chemical processes. with the highest efficiency. This way, nothing goes to a landfill. Everything comes back into the economy, even if it doesn’t make economic sense in the short term, it will still be the environmentally right thing to do. And because you have other segments that are sort of economically viable, you can then go into an integrated recycling approach.

The Hyderabad plant will have the capacity to process precious metals feedstock of about 20,000 tonnes per annum.

The Asia-Pacific region is poised to become the most dominant in the precious metals recovery market. What is the reason behind this?

Consumption. Recycling has to be close to the point of consumption, otherwise, the logistics cost makes the whole process inefficient. AsiaPacific is the demand driver for both industrial growth as well as electronics and technology-based products consumption. And as the consumption of these products on a per capita basis increases, with Asia Pacific having the largest population in the world, this will be where the entire action will be.