S1 E45: ACE Revolutionizing Battery Recycling w/ Nishchay Chadha

Dustin Olsen (00:40)
Everyone welcome to the rare earth exchanges podcast. You're joined by me my co-host Daniel and Nishchay Chadha from ACE Clean battery recycling. ACE is a been developing a cleaner safer and more scalable way to recover critical minerals from spent batteries. So turning what many people probably see into waste problems into a circular economy opportunity.

So, Nishchay thank you so much for being on the show. How are you?

Nishchay Chadha (01:09)
Very good Dustin. Thank you so much for having me here. Thank you Daniel for having me here as well It's very nice to meet the two of you Look looking forward to this conversation. Actually you you guys have been doing a great job I've seen some of your or listened to some of your podcasts Earlier as well and and really looking forward to this conversation

Dustin Olsen (01:28)
Absolutely. Well, we are glad to have you here and you're in Singapore. So we are in opposite time zones right now. So we're glad that you're making the time right now to be here. We would love to get just a kind of a quick summary about some of your background, what you're doing today. It sounds like you've spent nearly two decades in the mining and global commodities area before founding ACE. So we'd love to hear a little bit about that journey and then we'll keep going.

Nishchay Chadha (01:33)
I'm

The moment you said two decades, I started feeling older. And ⁓ so maybe we'll skip that part. But yeah, I've spent a decent amount of time in the industry.

Daniel O'Connor (01:56)
Hahaha

Nishchay Chadha (02:07)
When we say the industry, I'm really talking broadly about metals rather than just recycling per se. I started my career as a mining engineer inside the mines. It used to be a lead, zinc, and silver mine. Very exciting operation, but the nearest grocery store was about 35 kilometers from the mine. So it was in the middle of nowhere, but great, great amazing experience. So that's where I started really in the trenches.

with explosives going around you and mines and know stuff stuff nice stuff like that and then moved on to various roles in the mining industry commercial roles as well set up distribution for the company i was working for on the metal side in various asian markets initially and then moved on to work for a very substantial

very well respected commodity trading house who also had a recycling division. So that sort of was my introduction to the industry. ⁓ Worked to build up a book in partnership of course with all the other team members in the company for lead and zinc. Lead, I'm not sure if you know, but for the sake of your audiences, lead is…

used in batteries for the longest time. It's a very stable, very nice metal. It's the most recycled product on the planet, but it has its issues. We'll talk about that later in this conversation. So that was sort of my first introduction to the industry.

I started this company in Singapore actually in 2019 and we'll talk about my co-founder as well. He's been working on battery-related technologies since 2014, much ahead of when I started working on building this platform.

But essentially the idea of building is green recycling was you have mining companies, know, have Glencore, have Rio, you have Alcoa, BHP's who are massive platforms, global companies in mining. You have in commodities, ⁓ agri commodities, have Cargill, have Olam, you have other such, you know, large players. But in recycling, you don't see a global platform, but you do see a huge issue around a fragmented industry.

where it's really really very important because you creating a lot of pollution, you have a resource which you can extract ⁓ to really create value, you can avoid mining, you can avoid mining related pollution, but you don't have a single platform who can integrate this very fragmented industry and then start improving.

this industry both from a technological perspective but also from financial and supply chain perspective. So with that thought, Ace Green Recycling or Ace Recycling at that time was founded. So that was the whole thought process and then later on I, you know.

partnered with who is currently my co-founder. We partnered together in 2019. He was already running a technology company focused on creating recycling processes for batteries without creating pollution and completely avoiding the smelting process, which is a major factor behind the pollution involved in the recycling processes. We later merged our two companies and created AIDS-free recycling, the company you see today. So that's a very long.

complicated history of the company, but yeah, we do come from the industry and we're trying to solve the problems which the industry has been facing for a very long time.

Dustin Olsen (05:24)
That's great and really helpful. sorry, remind me, how long has Ace been around since you founded it?

Nishchay Chadha (05:30)
So

I founded it in 2019 right before COVID.

and we sort of started together. The spread of COVID started around the same time. But my co-founder, he's been at it since 2014. So if you really want to go back into time, it's been 11 years of a lot of hard work and innovation which has gone into it. And you already told me that I've been two decades into this industry. So it really depends on.

Dustin Olsen (06:01)
You

Nishchay Chadha (06:04)
how you want to start counting.

Dustin Olsen (06:05)
Yeah.

Daniel O'Connor (06:07)
But you still look young, so

feel good about that.

Nishchay Chadha (06:10)
Yeah,

I have to, you know, now that you've pointed it out, I'm going to start looking out as well.

Daniel O'Connor (06:13)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

What, you know, if I could may jump in Dustin, you know, listen, could you, with recycling, you know, we look at, you know, rare earth to magnet, you're more batteries for, is it batteries for electric vehicles? Is that your primary end product as part of this circular offering?

Nishchay Chadha (06:36)
So see electric vehicles are very small part of the whole battery sector. People are only hearing about batteries today.

because of EVs, but batteries have been around forever. They've been used in energy storage. You talk about, you know, if you go back 20, 30 years, when electricity wasn't easily available, you know, you had power backup at homes as well, right? So that's where batteries were always used. They're used in all ICE engine cars. Many EVs also have a lead battery and a lithium battery. A lithium battery is replacing the engine. It's not replacing the lead battery in most cars. So batteries have

around for many many many decades. It's not a new phenomena. So our focus is to recycle all of these commercially available battery types in the right way, not just electric vehicle batteries. So starting from energy storage to mobility, whether it's two-wheelers, three-wheelers, four-wheelers, whether you talk about mobile phones, laptops, we cover.

all of these segments. Today the largest segment for us within the company is lead acid battery recycling without smelting process and we also have technologies for lithium battery recycling. So we have technology stacks for all of these segments but the largest number of batteries available today on the planet are actually the lead batteries.

and that is something we have chosen to prioritize today while we have technologies for all of these.

Daniel O'Connor (08:03)
And let's talk about the lead batteries today. If you look at that market, what percentage of the actual batteries come from recycled processes?

Nishchay Chadha (08:14)
So, lead, you know, interestingly, lead is one metal which can be recycled infinitely without losing its properties. So therefore, a very high number of batteries in this industry.

come from recycled sources. Initially in the past many years ago the proportion used to be around 40 odd percent then it increased to 50 now it's closer to 60 plus.

depending on which country you are in, it'll be between 50 to 60 % coming from recycled sources. If you are in the US, most of it comes from recycled sources. If you are in China, you are in India, a lot of it still comes from mining activities as well. It really depends on where you are, but if you take a global average, you're talking about anywhere between 60 to 70 % coming from recycling, for the pure fact that it's a very recyclable material.

and it does not lose its properties when you recycle it. Unlike many other you know materials if you talk about plastics, you talk about aluminium, they sort of lose their properties and cannot be directly used in the same process, but lead does not have that disadvantage.

Dustin Olsen (09:21)
That's really fascinating. So for those who aren't engineers or overly technical, can you just quickly summarize what the non-smelting approach is versus other traditional recycling metals?

Nishchay Chadha (09:30)
Yep.

Yeah. So think of a smelter, know, the conventional process is a smelting process. What is a smelter? A smelter is essentially if you took a furnace, a very, very large furnace, and you started heating it up using a lot of fossil fuels.

and you bring the temperature up to 1400 degrees, maybe 1200, maybe 13, maybe 1400 degrees, what will happen? You'll start burning the stuff, you'll start creating a lot of air emissions and you'll also be chucking in a lot of toxic chemicals to enable the process which ends up creating a lot of toxic waste. So you do get the recycled product out of it, but essentially you've also created a lot of pollution.

What we do is we've created a process which uses organic food grade chemicals. It's a chemical process. It's a non-burning process. It operates at room temperature. The outcome of that is we get essentially the same or better quality product.

But at the same time, we are not creating this pollution which both relates to air emissions and also solid waste dumping. We do not create solid waste because we are not using the furnace process. And the only emission in the air is actually positive emission. It's pure oxygen, interestingly, and it's no magic. We are not doing any voodoo signs here. But essentially, lead in a battery is in the form of oxides.

A large majority of it is in the form of oxides. And because we are not burning that in a furnace, we end up releasing the oxygen in the air. And that ends up creating this positive emission. So it's really a byproduct of the process. So in a nutshell, we don't operate at very large temperatures. We do not use any fossil fuels in the process. It's a fully electrified process. And you can imagine, because we are not taking the materials to a very high temperature, the energy usage is

also very low, we are operating at room temperature. So you do save on a lot of funds not just commercially but also environmentally.

Dustin Olsen (11:31)
Thank you. That helps.

Nishchay Chadha (11:33)
I hope that was simple enough. I would be very happy if you allow me. I'll be very happy to share some pictures as well, maybe as part of this conversation or later to demonstrate how the two processes look like as well in comparison. Happy to do that as well.

Daniel O'Connor (11:33)
Very, very interesting.

But

that sounds amazing though that this recycling process basically eliminates air, adverse air particles and also doesn't have much in the way of solid waste. That's pretty amazing. So again, so are you saying for lead, are most batteries today recycled in this Clean way or is your way novel and differentiated?

Nishchay Chadha (12:13)
So I would say 99 point something percent of the batteries recycled today are recycled using the conventional smelting process. Now it could be done in a highly.

unregulated way in certain countries and a very regulated way in other countries, but essentially the process has been smelting. There are many people, it's a problem which has existed for many decades. So, and there've been a lot of plant shutdowns in various countries because of this pollution, but people have tried to solve this problem by creating chemical processes, but we've been…

Fortunately for us, unfortunately for the industry, I would say it's taken too long to create a process which is pollution free or with substantially reduced pollution. And we are the only ones today with a commercialized process for lead battery recycling through organic chemical usage rather than through the smelting process. So by and large,

you could say the whole industry right now except for the customers we are working with or the recyclers we are working with right now, everybody else is doing the conventional smelting process. And that's what we are trying to do. We are trying to transition this industry which is very, very important. In fact, US a couple of weeks ago has declared lead as a critical metal. It was always a critical metal, but now it's been stamped as being a critical metal. So, it's a very crucial industry. It needs to exist.

recyclers have always been handicapped by technology. It's not that they are they have all intention to do it right, but they were always handicapped by lack of technology. So now we presented the solution and our attempt is we are not trying to compete with those guys. We're trying to say, hey, we are here to partner. We're here to help. We're here to help you transition. Our processes are very modular. So you don't need to remove your whole plant today. Let's do it step by step. So we've been helping companies

try it out, transition step by step, you know, in a very friendly and cooperative manner and change takes time. So the short answer here is, super majority of it is through smelting process, but hopefully in time it will transition.

Dustin Olsen (14:20)
That's great. So with what you were just saying, you're helping other companies. So are you licensing your technology to them or are you using it to scale your own operation?

Nishchay Chadha (14:29)
We do a bit of both depending on which markets we are playing in and what's the appreciation for technology and Clean operations. We have partnerships in various markets, Taiwan, Armenia, Australia for example, Thailand, India, where we are partnering with companies, licensing our technology to players to help them transition. There are a few others which I can't talk about right now which are in the play.

In North America, in Texas, we are setting up our flagship facility that will be fully using our technology end to end, pretty large facility. The plan is to set up 150,000 tons. It's in phases, of course. The first phase is being set up as we speak and hopefully should be operational by end of 2026. So in North America, for benefit of your listeners, over the last many…

years there have been multiple shutdowns or smelters a lot of them because of pollution there have been a lot of penalties on smelters there have been a lot of issues around renewing those permits and and you know those players

have the right mindset from perspective of trying to recycle this product because it's very important, but they are all handicapped by lack of technology. So our attempt here is to demonstrate it at very large scale in the US and then try and help other companies as well transition. So it's a mix of both.

Daniel O'Connor (15:49)
On the technology,

is it protected by patents or is it more of a trade secret type of situation?

Nishchay Chadha (15:54)
It's

a very interesting question. It's both. So it's pattern protected, but at the same time, it's a lot of trade secrets. If you've heard of the coca-cola strategy, so we have a set of proprietary food trade organic chemicals.

which we use and without which the process does not work. It's really used in very, very tiny quantities, but that's the secret sauce. That secret sauce is protected through trade secrets. You know, we always keep hearing about there's a trade secret formula which Coca-Cola has, which is logged in somewhere, probably in Atlanta. It's the same thing for us.

I just can't say where it's locked up for us, but it's the same philosophy, I would say.

Daniel O'Connor (16:38)
And so, you know, if you look at ⁓ it, because it sounds like, and just so I want to make sure I understand the answer to Dustin's question. it's modular. So if there are recyclers in the United States, you can partner with them and somehow license the access to the technologies that know or.

Nishchay Chadha (16:56)
Yeah, that's absolutely possible. You can go small and you can say, hey, let's install a few modules first and let's try it out. And then let's go ahead once you are more comfortable. Why not?

Daniel O'Connor (17:09)
Okay, okay.

Dustin Olsen (17:09)
That's great.

Nishchay Chadha (17:10)
See

our goal here, you know, if you look at the big picture, our goal here is not to say, hey, we want to be the only company on the planet using this. We cannot scale that way. Even if you

And there's a much larger mission behind what we're trying to do. We were all, my co-founder, myself, all the other people in the company, most of us in senior management in the company, we all had great jobs, which paid great bonuses as well, much more than what we're making right now. But there was no need to wreck your life and work 24-7.

and not create a very massive impact. This is an industry we really care about. We've been part of this industry for the longest time. We really want to transition this industry to the next stage. Otherwise, it'll become a dinosaur, you know?

You'll have companies who are using the old processes, they'll shut down eventually. What will you do? You need this metal. It's a very stable metal. It's really recyclable. We all know that. It's cheap. It's not very expensive as nickel, cobalt, lithium. You have to do it, but let's just do it right. So if we are not able to help other companies, then we failed in our mission.

Daniel O'Connor (18:20)
Right, right. No, that makes a lot of sense. you know, just so I have an understanding of the market in the, let's say the United States. If we look at battery recyclers in the United States, you know, total number of players, any sense of that size?

Nishchay Chadha (18:37)
Yeah, it's yeah. Yeah on the on the metal production side like on the output side. It's more than a million Tons right now. I would I would put I don't have the exact numbers in front of me right now But I would say from a battery processing perspective. It's anywhere between 1.5 to 2 million tons of batteries being processed right now see us transition to

100 % recycling many years ago when they shut down the primary smelters. Primary smelters mean where you use mining related feedstock and ores and then you process them. So US is 100 % on recycling for a very long time, but at the same time, you've seen a lot of shutdowns happen in US.

The impact of that is at the current moment, there are hundreds of millions of dollars worth of lead scrap batteries or waste batteries being exported, some legally, some not so legally to Asia, some to Mexico as well. And at the same time, US is forced to import lead as a metal batteries, are like white labeled.

and other materials, and that's in billions of dollars. So there's a huge gap which is increasing day by day, unlike lithium. Like in lithium, the whole value chain is being set up right now. It's not a market which is ready today for large scale facilities to be set up and recycling huge amount of batteries, but lead has this issue now.

Daniel O'Connor (19:57)
Thanks.

Nishchay Chadha (20:01)
We're trying to solve this issue today, which exists where you're exporting scrap batteries, you're importing new product, and you have gap in capacity because you don't have the right technology to produce without pollution.

Daniel O'Connor (20:11)
Interesting, interesting.

That's it.

Dustin Olsen (20:13)
So we've, I mean, we're obviously big fans of rare earth elements here at Rare Earth Exchanges, but there's a lot of similarities with the critical minerals as well. And the rare earth supply chain faces some similar issues from processing, refining, recycling, circularity. What parallels do you see from

Nishchay Chadha (20:18)
show.

Dustin Olsen (20:34)
critical minerals to reverse to batteries and so on.

Nishchay Chadha (20:37)
Yeah. There a lot of parallels, know, and, ⁓ you know, the name of your podcast is a giveaway. You are fans of Ray Rourke's, you know. So, so, see, you should we should start looking at it from an origination perspective, I would say, like.

Where all are these critical metals or rare earths? And if we club all of these materials into a single category, you have issues around where are these originating? They're originating right now from mining perspective in some very limited countries where either there are a lot of political issues associated.

with them from a supply chain perspective or there are a of compliance issues. If you talk about, you know, it's been talked about too many times, but it's not really been resolved. People talk about Congo, for example, right? People talk about the DRC. People say, hey, there are a lot of issues around child labor or unethical mining. Then you talk about Russia, you talk about China and you talk about the whole trade war. You talk about India having issues with China.

You have issues around US versus China. So how can you create stable supply chains for these very important materials to advance the civilization? Right now, on one hand, we are talking about AI and data centers creating a lot of storage infrastructure worldwide. Every country is trying to do it. US is trying to do it on its own. China is trying to do it on its own. And India, Europe.

it's very important all of these regions have to create their own local infrastructure to support their own population. So you need localized supply chains. By the same time the origin of these materials is concentrated in some very limited hands. So that's a huge parallel. From a policy perspective all of these major regions they're trying to control the flow of these materials and trying to create domestic supply chains. So again there are parallels between rares and critical materials.

Unlike plastics, for example, plastics, everyone was trying to ship the waste away. Right? If you talk about Europe, Europe for the longest time was shipping waste to Malaysia, Philippines, know, and Indonesia and Vietnam, and until news broke, and there was a huge human cry. But in metals, people are actually trying to retain these materials.

Whether it's magnets, whether it's lead, whether it's lithium, whether it's copper, countries are saying, hey, we don't want you to take these resources because we can't create new mines overnight. The average time from start to finish a new mining asset takes to scale up production, it's about 15 to 20 years in any country. Do we have that luxury of time? We don't. So the rationale always is let's try and create, know, circularity can be a very complicated.

discussion like what exactly do you call circularity, whether you include refining, whether you talk about everything in the old value chain, but creating domestic supply chains is of utmost importance and that's true whether you talk about rares or you talk about critical material, it's true in both of these cases.

Daniel O'Connor (23:36)
100 %

Nishchay Chadha (23:37)
And that can only

come from mining or recycling, if you want to say that.

Daniel O'Connor (23:42)
So if we look at the critical mineral or particularly the rare earth element supply chain, which is not a critical mineral, it's a different category. The 17, I believe, rare earth elements and nearly all of them are processed in China over 90%. Is it similar with batteries, whether it's lead or others? Are the Chinese the leaders in recycling these products?

Nishchay Chadha (24:06)
Thankfully not so much in lead because lead as we talked about it, it's hugely recycled and therefore most countries have their own supply chains. The net inflow of new batteries is still you know in the US at least there's a lot of inflow from Asia and not just say China it comes from India, comes from Korea, it comes from Japan as well. So there's still a net import.

But most of these countries do have very well set up supply chains, which are very well established. That's not the case in lithium, as we all know. Lithium, of course, China controls the market. They were the ones who really created this market. So of course, they control this market, at least for the next few years, while US, India, Europe, they try and create supply chains and try and…

all these regulatory hurdles which they've created themselves over the last many many years. lithium is a different topic altogether with China is the leader worldwide and all other countries are catching up but lead has very well formed domestic supply chains already.

Daniel O'Connor (25:13)
system.

Dustin Olsen (25:14)
That's fantastic. And aligns with a lot of what we talk about here at Rare Earth Exchanges. So can we talk just a little bit about how policy frameworks in the US, India, Southeast Asia are shaping the growth in customer demand? We kind of eluded to some of that. It sounds like it is changing, evolving to make way for that. But what are your thoughts?

Going fast enough, is it? What do think?

Nishchay Chadha (25:39)
See,

if you ask any entrepreneur, regulations are never moving fast enough as they would like. So my answer would definitely be, no, it's not moving fast enough. But from a practical standpoint, all governments or all regions you talked about, they're all working towards creating these domestic supply chains. And they're all trying to create these policy frameworks. Now,

The real question is, yes, fine, you're creating this policy, but is it being implemented from a practical standpoint? So during the previous administration in the US, for instance, you had IRA, and IRA doled out a lot of money to very.

many many companies right for for creating new batteries and this this was more on lithium not so much on lead but a lot of money was was spent a taxpayer money was spent in promoting setting up very large infrastructure very large plants and there were grants there were loans a lot of money was spent did it end up creating an actual supply chain you know it's very questionable because most of this material which was collected and processed

⁓ by these companies who use taxpayer dollars without using any names they ended up in China again. So because there was no refining capacity there was no consumption within the US so yes there was policy there was also money given out but there was lack of intention from the users of that money and there was a lack of consumption

or complete setup of the whole value chain within the country. while the intention was right, the policy was in the right direction, but the government did not do enough to block the outflow of these intermediates which were created using that money. And it still ended up in China, whether it was through Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, that's a different topic. It ended up in China. That's the bottom line. So.

Yes, countries are working on policy. Like India recently has come up with this critical materials policy where they are supporting setting up of infrastructure for rare earths and battery recycling and they're giving out grants and subsidies. But when you go into the nitty gritties of that policy, I think there's still a lot of work which needs to be done. We've been reviewing that as well. We do believe there needs to be a lot more done.

Europe again, I think they have to pull up their socks and work on their speed. Maybe I'm being too direct here, but the lack of speed, maybe it's a beautiful landscape and people like to work at their own pace. That's true. We all enjoy going there for holidays, but you can't always be on holidays. You know, you need to.

you need to speed up and advance with the rest of the world. Otherwise, you'll just keep having these forums and keep talking about climate change, but really not create a dent because, you know, fine, you can talk about policy, but implementation is a big issue. They need to speed up on the permitting side as well. Permits take the longest time in Europe. For us, we've been focused a lot on the US market because for all the faults…

or policies you can talk about in US, whether it's the Biden administration or the Trump administration, but all of them have been very pro supporting critical materials. And therefore the speed of execution is at least fast. You know, they might be doing things right or they might be doing things wrong, but at least there's an intention and there's speed. Europe, forget about it. You know, we'll have another podcast and you'll be saying, Hey, you've been in the industry three decades in a year and you're trying to set up a plant in Europe.

Dustin Olsen (29:03)
Ha ha ha.

Daniel OConnor (29:07)
this is fascinating. Are you saying that perhaps North America will move faster with ⁓ supporting facilities for recycling?

Nishchay Chadha (29:15)
I do think so. I do believe that. think North America is moving in the right direction. The current administration also has been very focused on creating domestic supply chains of critical metals. I do see speed of execution in the US being the fastest. Other countries, of course, China, you you can't beat China. China, can just decide. tomorrow, before you blink, you will see a factory being set up there, right?

So, but outside of China, I would say US is moving pretty fast and that's really good to see.

Daniel OConnor (29:47)
Yes, for sure.

Dustin Olsen (29:48)
That's great.

Nishchay Chadha (29:48)
And

they have a lot of catching up to do anyways. So it makes sense to move fast.

Daniel OConnor (29:52)
So from a market perspective, I looked at your website. You're in India and in Singapore today, right?

Nishchay Chadha (30:00)
So Singapore, we don't have a plant. We have a regional HQ in Singapore, but we have a plant in India, we have in Taiwan. We're working on the expansion of that Taiwan plant right now. As we speak, it's the equipment are being shipped for the expansion today, actually. And ⁓ we have an upcoming plant in Armenia, which is under setup right now. It's under commissioning and shipment of equipment as we speak.

this an upcoming facility in Australia, Thailand as well in the next quarter. These are all facilities which we are licensing to partners, to existing recyclers, except for a lithium plant in India, which is our own plant. Everything else is where we've licensed our technology. North America, Texas is our own facility. It's a couple of hours from Houston. So that's basically our flagship facility.

Daniel OConnor (30:49)
It's really impressive, Nishchay. You folks are growing fast. It feels like it's a good time. There's demand and a recognition that you're bringing real value.

Nishchay Chadha (31:01)
Yeah, it's true, but I would say not fast enough because the market is huge. The problem we are trying to solve is huge and there new problems coming which we would like to solve. You know, we definitely have to solve the lithium problem, but now in the near future, you'll have problems. You have problems around mine tailings, for example, all these mines which have huge mountains of waste which needs to be solved for. You need to extract materials there. You'll have nuclear waste related problems as well with all these.

you know, the mini nuclear power plants coming. So there are a lot of problems which are coming. So we would want to deploy and work on the current problem statement as fast as possible and then also add, we like to be busy. So we would want to be solving new problems as well.

Daniel OConnor (31:33)
Yeah.

And so just if I may, ⁓ I know we're getting towards the end, but if you look at your organization, the company and how it's organized, do you have a research and development division for these, to solve these problems?

Nishchay Chadha (31:56)
Yeah,

absolutely. So my co-founder, he's a scientist himself, Dr. Vipin Tyagi. And he's based in the US for the last 20, 25 years now. He runs a team of some very accomplished PhDs who worked in US, who worked in China, who worked in India.

not just on battery materials, but on a lot of other metals. One of our scientists, he was working on LFP batteries, which are in work now, but 15 years ago, you know, and another guy who's worked on nuclear waste in the past, so very strong, very diverse team, which he runs, and we want to continue solving problems. keep…

getting new problem statements. We are focused very much on batteries and lead batteries and lithium batteries at the moment, but we want to continue to innovate. See, on a very high level, if you see what is a company, the company right now is a combination of people who are great technologists and also people who come from the industry. People who come from the industry, not just myself, plenty of my other colleagues have spent decades in the industry doing operations.

We've hired a very senior resource a few weeks ago, who was running the largest battery recycling ⁓ operation in the United States. So him, a lot of other people have a lot of history in operations. Then we have people who've spent decades in supply chains globally, not just the US, Asia, Europe, Africa. We have people who really understand metal and recycling supply chain. We have this exposure and knowledge base in-house.

where we know how supply chains work, how recycling works, how the metal industry and the mining industry works, and how technology works. So that's our skill set. Today it's being used in batteries, tomorrow it'll be used in something else. So when you tell me you're growing fast, I would always say not fast enough because we have plenty of problems ahead of ourselves.

Daniel OConnor (33:34)
Mm-hmm.

got it i gotcha not it's it sounds sounds great it sounds like an incredible potential any ⁓ other last minute questions as we get close towards the top of the hour

Nishchay Chadha (33:57)
Thank you so much.

Dustin Olsen (34:04)
Yep, just one more question, a quick one. So, summarize, what's the most misunderstood thing about battery recycling?

Nishchay Chadha (34:14)
So there a of misunderstood things. First of all, say and I keep hearing this misinformation that 90 % of batteries end up in landfills. That's just completely untrue. That's just false. Because batteries have so much of metal, which is expensive stuff in them, nobody throws it in a landfill. Even if it goes to a landfill, there are people who extract it from there.

So batteries do not end up in landfills, a large majority of it. You just don't read about it because a lot of it ends up in unorganized sector. So you don't read it in stats from publications because they don't have access to the actual recycled content. The fact is almost all batteries are recycled. Some of them are recycled properly. A lot of them are recycled not so properly and in a very pollutive manner.

and you just read that they go to the line for they don't. So that's one. So the real issue is not are they recycled or not or can they be recycled or not. The real issue is how do you recycle them in a manner which is not creating another problem of pollution. So you're trying to solve one problem by recycling, but you're creating another problem by recycling it in the wrong manner. So that's the key thing. Can you recycle it using the right processes, creating transparency in the supply chain?

and creating proper infrastructure so that your people who are working in that ecosystem and people who are living around that ecosystem are being taken care of. That's it.

Dustin Olsen (35:38)
That's great. And I never, never probably would have thought of that assumption that batteries just end up in landfills. ⁓ So thanks. Miche, if people want to connect with you, want to follow ACE into the future, where should they go?

Nishchay Chadha (35:44)
You

All my contact details are publicly available. So anyone can Google me, reach out on LinkedIn. There's an email which is mentioned on our website. All those emails land up in my inbox. So, you know, I'm very keen on connecting with people in the industry and outside the industry as well. So more than happy to engage. No problem. We are in open work. We are here to work with people. We are here to partner with people.

Dustin Olsen (36:18)
That's great. Thank you. Hichet, we appreciate you so much being on the podcast to talk about your business and the things that you guys are doing to make for a healthier, cleaner world that we all live in by recycling batteries the right way. Hopefully we have you again on the show to give us an update. Maybe it'll be two and a half decades in the industry. Hopefully it won't be three by the time we talk again. We'll see.

⁓ So, Nishchay thank you for joining us and we'll see you soon.

Daniel OConnor (36:46)
Thank you.

Nishchay Chadha (36:46)
Thank

you, Dustin. Thank you, Daniel. It's been a pleasure being on your podcast. Thank you so much for your time.

Daniel OConnor (36:52)
Likewise.