S1 E39 – BatX: Revolutionizing Battery Recycling

Dustin Olsen (00:40)
Welcome back to the Rare Earth Exchanges podcast. You're joined by me, Dustin, my co-host Daniel, and a special guest, Utkarsh Singh from India, who is the CEO of thank you for being on the show. Feels like it's been a long time coming. We've had this on the calendar for a while, but thanks for taking the time to be with us.

Daniel O'Connor (00:49)
.

Utkarsh Singh (01:01)
Thanks a lot Dustin. Thank you Mr. Daniel for having me here and it's truly my privilege. Thank you.

Dustin Olsen (01:06)
Perfect. Well, you've got kind of quite an interesting history. So you started in marketing and as a CSR and then you founded a battery recycling company. Can you give us some insights on that journey, how you got started in this company?

Utkarsh Singh (01:21)
Yes, definitely. think since ⁓ my childhood, I was always intrigued about doing something for the social welfare. Even in my college days, I was running a non-profit organization which was for the education of the underprivileged children. And then, you know, I had that inside me that what can I do for the society? But at the same time, I realized that to bring change, you need to also have some certain capital.

Then I figured out that during my CSR journey, I traveled to lot of villages in India and I figured out that environmental challenges are coming up big time in India and definitely climate change is a big problem. That is where I discussed with my co-founder who is a very, very interesting technical person and he figured out that yes, electric mobility is something which is going to solve a lot of this pollution that is happening all across our country.

As a country, we are known for one of the largest air pollution in the world and that is what we wanted to change. And we realized that how we can do our contribution against fighting the climate change. And we realized that if we are able to contribute somehow in scaling up the electric mobility and its adaption in India, and that can only happen if the batteries start being built up from scratch in India.

Now the challenge we realized is we don't have critical minerals which everybody is talking about today and this happened in 2017 when we had the IHEE opening moment that okay we have to work on getting the critical minerals and we started as college young to you know how you have seen it breaking bad the two kids in college running around the chemistry lab and trying to figure out what is lithium what is cobalt and that thankfully paid off and today we run a very successful lithium ion battery recycling company.

That was it, a bit of our journey as a student.

Dustin Olsen (03:12)
That's awesome. So you kind of actually just touched on this just a little bit, but for those who are new to BatX energies, could you describe just a bit more what you guys do in simple terms and why that matters?

Utkarsh Singh (03:23)
Yeah,

definitely. So we know that there are, you must have seen periodic table. I think a lot of people who have all been through a science class would have seen a periodic table and there are 118 elements in that. The key fundamental about all of those elements are it can neither be created nor destroyed, right? Which means

these can be recycled again and again infinitely and that is what we do. We ensure the critical materials which are there in the periodic table to find them in different applications and ensure that those are recycled so that they can be used for another application and this life cycle keeps on running infinitely. That's how we are going to preserve the natural resources that we have in our world and that is what we do and everything at Batex happens

has happened from scratch. We built our technology for recycling of lithium ion batteries, which primarily have three critical materials, that is cobalt, nickel and lithium. And as a matter of fact, these materials are very much geopolitically located. So for countries like India, which doesn't have them as a natural resource, it is a very tough task to ensure a domestic self-reliant supply chain.

And that's what we are trying to build here back in India and always happy to collaborate with different countries around the world and develop a self-reliant supply chain within the ecosystem. So that's what we do.

Daniel O'Connor (04:52)
That's great. can you hear me okay? Okay, perfect. So before we get into some more technical questions, a macro question. If we look at batteries for electric vehicles, are we talking mostly batteries for electric vehicles or other types of green electrification?

Dustin Olsen (04:54)
Yep, you're great.

Utkarsh Singh (05:09)
Yes, true that's correct. So we are talking about everything to do in the energy storage space which utilizes lithium and if you ask me to put it in very simple term, right? So for a moment, let's forget the entire, you know fossil fuel economy and let's look at new energy economy. There are three fundamental pillars of new energy. One is generation, second is storage and third one is distribution.

Right? So for the generation there is solar, is wind, there is nuclear and various kind of energy different applications are being created but the most fundamental pillar is the storage. Now when it comes to storage the maximum amount of charge that can be stored in the least space can only be done by lithium. Therefore lithium ion batteries become a very very suitable solution.

for storage of the clean energy. So therefore, if you look at your mobile phone, your laptops or any application for that sort to the electric vehicle or a large truck, everywhere lithium ion batteries are used and these can be recycled. So as a company, we focused on creating a solution wherein we taken all kinds of different lithium ion batteries and extract all of these critical materials.

Daniel O'Connor (06:29)
And on that note, would say that lithium is the key critical mineral. We're not talking about rare earth elements per se here, which are separate. We're talking about critical minerals and specifically lithium. Now question on that before we get into some of the concepts that you all are driving forward. Lithium as a critical mineral, where are we at today?

with the status of that, what percentage, who are the biggest suppliers of the core product and who is majority refining? What does that supply chain look like for lithium?

Utkarsh Singh (07:09)
Yeah,

fantastic. Now, I think that's a great question. So let me break it down into three different factors. The first one is the mining, second is the pre-processing and third one is the processing and then the fourth ⁓ step is also there which is creation of the final product, right? So if we look at lithium, the mining is happening in very, very specific geographies around the world. For example, it's in Australia or it's in Chile, right?

And these are the two major countries where the mining is happening, wherein in Australia, it's more of a spodumene ore, which is in the rock form. And in Chile, it is more in the different format, right, which is in the brine. So therefore, majority of the companies who are doing the mining are either from China or some of them are from US, right? Or it is governed by some of the US companies. For example, in China,

One of some of the Chinese companies like Jemfang Lithium is there, right? And then apart from that, one of the largest players in the extraction of lithium from the miners is SQM. So these are the major players around the world who runs the operations of ⁓ extraction. Then when it comes to refining, 90 % of the world's lithium for refining, which is processing operation, comes back to China. That is where

lot of countries around the world are having problem. Firstly, they don't have the efficiencies or the scale that China has today to process. Therefore, the economics doesn't match. And even if they want to break in the supply chain, they have to pay much higher. That doesn't make any economic sense for these countries to get into. So, of course, the world is trying to catch up on that. But the majority is happening in China. And that's where

I think it is also a threat but also an opportunity. So it's up to us what we look at.

Daniel O'Connor (08:59)
Well,

on that note, this is very important that we delve into this a little bit more. And it's sort of aligned with the premise of rare earth exchanges itself. Now that 90 % consolidation of processing of lithium in China, I'm assuming it's like rare earths where it just sort of a global division of labor.

It just sort of made sense. How far off are the Chinese in terms of scale, process, and technology when it comes to lithium? So let us say, you know, other countries, whether it's India, US, what have you, want to start processing that lithium onshore. What are we looking at? How far away are we? Realistically, let's be conservative here.

Utkarsh Singh (09:46)
uh yes okay

okay don't hate me to say that but i think at least 15 years yeah at least 15 years 1515 at least

Daniel O'Connor (09:52)
No, don't worry. How many? Yeah, makes it. ⁓ Of course,

that makes total sense for us. We feel the same. forecast the same for the rare earths. There's a lot of talk right now, but then there's the reality. So with that being said, we're easily a decade plus, depending on the Chinese for lithium production. Now, they're opening big lithium.

Deposits in Nevada, which is the state right next to us. Okay, we're in Utah But again, you know, they got to build a mine. That's another 10 years. What have you? You know, there's there's conflicts. There's you know environmental concerns now Are there any? Game before we get into specifically bad X and and how you all are different In terms of lithium, are there any

disruptive technologies out there that could replace lithium in the next decade.

Utkarsh Singh (10:44)
see of course there are I would say there are substitutes but it is very hard to replace lithium because if you look at the periodic table and if you look at the energy density it is hydrogen helium and lithium so hydrogen and helium are the gases and third element in the table is lithium so there and then it comes sodium so of course lithium will always be one step ahead of sodium in terms of holding the energy density right so therefore it will always have that edge

So as the world is getting more and more sleek, even today iPhones are much lighter, know, everybody wants to have more energy and lesser space. So either human have to leave that, you know, leave that sentiment or otherwise you should be ready to have a larger, you know, storage banks. So I think lithium will always dominate wherein

Daniel O'Connor (11:24)
Yeah, of course.

Utkarsh Singh (11:35)
Yes, there are the various technologies and have different applications. For example, hydrogen and sodium ion batteries, you know, but all of those have different use cases. So like there is diesel, there is petrol, there is different, you know, forms of oils. Everything will coexist. So my one word answer to that is coexistence of all different technologies.

Daniel O'Connor (11:58)
And on that note, and again, this is sort of macro policy again, you know, in the United States with the recent big, beautiful bill that was passed, all of our green incentives are gone. So we're going back, it's sort of back to the future of fossil fuels and nuclear. Okay. That's the idea. What's your take as to the rest of the markets worldwide?

Utkarsh Singh (12:20)
Yeah, so I think I can, yeah, you're saying something.

Daniel O'Connor (12:23)
No, no, please. just again. And what I'm trying to do here is I'm trying to set the stage for the markets. You know, where do you follow? Do you follow what I'm saying?

Utkarsh Singh (12:24)
Okay, sure. Sure.

Hmm sure 100 %

Yes 100 % No I am happy to you know share my point of view on that and specifically focus on our country India what we are doing out here and whatever I know of our friends in different parts of the world. So of course see at the end of the day it all comes to one word which is called as national energy security and you will be more secure with what you have.

So for example, you have the fossil fuel. So that is your most secure bet. China doesn't have fossil fuel. Their most secure bet is all the lithium and the nickel and the cobalt that they acquired all across the world. And for countries like us, of course, we are big on refining of the fossil fuel. We have one of the largest refineries here in India. But we will always be of the

thought process where different technologies can coexist together. So of course, government has the taxes on fossil fuels and petrol and diesel is always increasing. But at the same time, is huge push and large incentives and subsidies from the government towards green transition. And it brings back to our company thesis.

that in electric vehicles, everything can be recycled again and again. But once the petrol or the fossil fuel that has been used cannot be recycled, it directly goes back and harming the environment, right? So there has to be a balance. think what US did with the big bill, I think the focus should have been balanced and how exactly Europe is doing it. Even the countries with big fossil fuel like ⁓

Middle East is also having a great incentives for green mobility. think that is very much important. than, yeah, I believe that, know, your weakness is not the right way, right? It's better to, you know, be more upfront and focus on developing technologies at scale. That's what China has done.

Daniel O'Connor (14:16)
Yeah. Yeah, I agree.

No, don't keep…

I think,

yeah, and I think the point that you're making, and I agree with, is that, again, our audience are investors, a lot of investors, and so we're trying to educate and empower people to understand where are these markets going, right? That's key. So I agree with you. I think that the non-carbon electrification movement is unstoppable. I think it's just gonna keep going.

Utkarsh Singh (14:48)
Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Daniel O'Connor (15:00)
Dustin,

we have a series of questions. think we should, if you could go ahead and keep some of those rolling and then I'll come up with some other questions.

Dustin Olsen (15:08)
Sounds great. So Utkarsh let's talk about the net zero waste, zero emissions recycling process. What's unique about your technology compared to other recycling?

Utkarsh Singh (15:17)
Sure, so specifically what happens in our technology we do molecule to molecule based extraction process wherein we have our own hydro metallurgical process which is very very much energy efficient because if you look across the world India has the one of the most competitive scrap battery prices. So therefore if you want to win here so you need to create a process which is very efficient which is possible at scale.

And the third point is which has the best economies. So that's what we have developed and why it is different is because we don't emit any part of our there is no air pollution, there is no liquid discharge in our process. So it is a circular closed loop process. So whatever once goes inside everything comes out and even if there is certain part which is 1 % 2 % it keeps on rotating and comes in the second or third cycle.

So that's what we have created here in India. So which is totally built to be have energy efficient as well as the closed loop process. So that's what we call it.

Daniel O'Connor (16:24)
So on that topic, just to follow up, in terms of India and recycling these batteries and the market, where do you all sort of sit in that ecosystem? are you all, how does that market look? How many producers are there? High level.

Utkarsh Singh (16:41)
Yeah, sure. So India today produces close to 50,000 to 75,000 metric tons of lithium-ion battery waste on a yearly basis. By 2030, we will have close to five lakh metric tons of waste on a yearly basis because the consumption of electric vehicles and different digital assets are increasing, even the data centers here in India. being one of the largest economies around the world and population, so our consumption is very high.

Right now when it comes to number of players, there are only four to five different refineries here in India and by refinery I call them as recycling and refinery are same thing that we call here in India who are extracting the critical windows. But in terms of pre-processing, which is like a collection of batteries and crushing them and converting them into black mass, there are more than I would say 50 to 70 players which are operational here in India. And today as a country we are able to only recycle

close to 15 to 20 percent of our waste generated. But of course, year on year basis, government has also introduced 200 million dollars of incentive and other schemes. So that is all pushing more and more players to come enter. But definitely for the critical mineral extraction process, it is very high end technology.

Daniel O'Connor (17:58)
so that makes sense. So basically there's, there's maybe a handful of actual, production level recyclers and, and out of them are.

Utkarsh Singh (17:59)
what it is.

Daniel O'Connor (18:08)
they mostly privately held or publicly traded. If investors wanted to know more, we might do an article on that. That's something, know, we, you know, is that market open for investment or is it still sort of privately held and venture capital backed?

Utkarsh Singh (18:22)
It is, I would say, 100 % privately owned and venture capital backed markets right now here in India. For the public companies, for them, think still the market is first of all, maybe premature. And secondly, the technology, there's a huge technology barrier here. This is a kind of technology that we call as

experiential technology. So it is not that you go somewhere and you just buy out the plant and buy the technology and you start running it. That's not going to happen because every day your feed is different. Every batch is different because some batch might have different compositions and the other batch will have a different composition. So every day you have to keep learning, keep learning it right. So today we are able to extract 95-96 percent

or is our efficiency rate that has come after third or fourth year of operation. So it takes a couple of years for people and that's even see there are two ways to get this technology. One is you go out to China and you buy it and that is banned. You cannot go and buy a hydrometallurgy process from China, right? That's not happening. ⁓ second way is you build it by yourself and we have seen across the world, know, in Europe, in US and Canada.

Daniel O'Connor (19:29)
Right. Right.

Utkarsh Singh (19:37)
People are building the process but the efficiency rates are still very low. And one thing that is different in India versus the plants that are being built in US is that in India we collect all the heterogeneous waste, bring it into one line and process it. Wherein in US it's more of manufacturing scrap coming to one facility.

Daniel O'Connor (19:53)
Yep. Yeah. Yep.

Utkarsh Singh (19:59)
So that is the easiest to do. If your feed is same every day, it is easiest to process. But if your feed is different every day, that's a big challenge. So I think that's where is the right way to do, we believe.

Daniel O'Connor (20:10)
And another question, and Dustin, I know we have a list of questions, but this is very important from an investor and market economy perspective. Those five producers in, or five to several in India, are they competing globally or is this mostly a domestic consumption for the sale?

Utkarsh Singh (20:28)
For the sale lot of material is today going outside India I would be very honest about it because in India the consumption and in various countries around the world the consumption is not yet happening at scale right because look at all around the world where are the largest factories as big as CAD, LBYD in different parts of the world there is no nowhere right. So unless and until the cell manufacturing has just taken up

And before cell manufacturing, comes cathode active material manufacturing, right? And that is where majority of material goes in. So that is still to take up in countries like India. But it is not very far. I can tell you it is not very far. It is four to five years from now where the consumption, internal consumption will be developed. Till then, yes, material will be traded all across the world. And that's what we are seeing, not only just in India, but all across the world. And it is landing up in just one country.

Daniel O'Connor (21:20)
Understood, that's very helpful by the way, thank you. Dustin?

Dustin Olsen (21:24)
So going on this topic of investors and things like that, you recently announced partnerships with companies like Vinfast and Rocklink in Germany. What do these collaborations mean for BatX's growth story? How do you decide who to partner with?

Utkarsh Singh (21:38)
Sure. So both the partnerships have different story. If we talk about Windfast, first of all, they have amazing products, right? And we have always had a thesis of working very closely with the OEMs. And you will be amazed to know as a company, as our sales strategy for onboarding any OEM for recycling, we never reach out to their sourcing team.

we always reach out to their R &D teams and we share with them that okay, this is the R &D that we have done. This is how we believe we can achieve better economies for you in your entire supply chain because we can really bring back the material back into your ecosystem wherein you can discount it back and your customer can have benefit. So we bring in the entire kind of understanding to the R &D teams.

We explain them technically and then they refer us to their sourcing team and then we get the contracts for basically, know, sourcing of their end of life batteries. So if we specifically talk about Windfast, we are working very closely with them for ensuring the complete collection of end of life or any insurance based batteries of their vehicles and ensuring that we pass on the best value.

to our customers, be it VinFast or be it MG or any other OEM that we've worked with, so we ensure that we are able to give back the right value ⁓ in terms of money to them for their end of life batteries. And I don't know that how it happens in US because I believe there is a gate piece out there, but in India it is very competitive, you have to really pay for the batteries and it's very expensive.

Dustin Olsen (23:15)
So speaking of R &D and some of that process, what does it look like when a battery arrives at your facility? What were some of the toughest technical challenges you had to overcome?

Utkarsh Singh (23:28)
Yeah, yeah, so when you look at the entire and this is a very very interesting point when you look at lithium-ion battery recycling and when you say the battery has come to end of life so what is the definition of end of life it is nowhere defined right we say the end of life is when a battery cannot be reused again into a different product right so in India specifically or in across the world it is coming up there is a

mid-world which is called as second life operations. So as a company we also focus on second life operations because we believe we should not waste any ounce of energy which is there into the battery. So unless and until the state of health of battery has not reduced less than 40 % and if when we receive them a bit as 80 % we put it into a second use case application where the batteries are again put to use and then once it comes to end of life then only we bring it back.

So the one of the most critical challenges to identify when to recycle the battery and when not. So that is first part that we focus on that because when we take it for refurbishing, the payback is always higher for the customer. That is the OEM. So if we are doing the refurbishing, we pay higher. If we are recycling, there is little bit lesser than that. So we ensure and put our mathematical formula that we pay the highest price to our customer. The second step is that if the battery is going for recycling,

making sure that we form the right batch. So we mix and match the right set of batteries so we have the very finest grade of black mass because the better the black mass the higher yield we have in the hydrometallurgy and that's what we focus at. So these are two to three very initial stage steps that we focus at and when we get more technical into the entire chemical operation we look at different parameters like temperature pH and different applications and that how we are able to extract.

the best yield and purity because the material that we make that is cobalt, nickel and lithium are all battery grade and we are the only producer in India which are making battery grade materials at scale.

Dustin Olsen (25:31)
That's incredible.

Daniel O'Connor (25:33)
Definitely. Definitely.

Utkarsh Singh (25:34)
Thank you. Thanks, Dr. Tenley.

Daniel O'Connor (25:35)
Dustin, I

had one follow-up. So just so we understand, and I want to make sure I understand this, when we are recycling the batteries, are there standards, of course, or is it like with rare earth magnets where each magnet is a bespoke tailored product? How standardized are the batteries today? If you could, know, out of 100 %

What percentage of that process is standardized today versus custom per the customer?

Utkarsh Singh (26:05)
So per customer I would say that batteries are same I mean customer as in the person from whom I am getting the batteries on the sourcing side but when I sell the material that is the salts of cobalt sulphate or lithium carbonate or nickel sulphate it doesn't matter everything that comes out is uniform and same because it is all 99.99 % pure material. So like I said

Daniel O'Connor (26:29)
Got it.

Utkarsh Singh (26:30)
You can consider it just to give you an example, you can consider it like gold. You have a 24 karat gold, you melt it, you again, you know, do the right process, you will again add 24 karat gold. It's nothing different than that. But here there is no smelting process. It is a chemical process.

Daniel O'Connor (26:46)
Got it, got it.

Dustin Olsen (26:47)
We're coming up to the end of our show here, but we always do kind of like to ask this question of what does the future look like? So if we're to meet again in five years, what does success look like for BatX and what is India's battery recycling story gonna be?

Utkarsh Singh (27:03)
Yes, I think India's recycling story is going to be the largest refiners in the world outside China and specifically in the South Asian region because India is growing very fast and our government and the country definitely understands very well the importance of circular economy because we as a country is very huge.

on consumption and if we don't have the right circular economy ethos in you know imbibed in the core of our country I think that is not a successful model therefore we as a company is very much dedicated to contribute in that and if I think the nation is focused on circular economy definitely companies like us and Batex are going to scale very fast anyways

year on year basis we are growing 100 percent. So I think the future is very bright and if you ask me how I see future, I think in a home, in every home, know out of four walls, one wall is going to be energy storage. So that is the scale that is going to come and I really bet on that.

Daniel O'Connor (28:08)
So does.

Dustin Olsen (28:08)
Wow, that's incredible. I

couldn't imagine a whole wall being a battery.

Utkarsh Singh (28:12)
Exactly. Exactly.

Daniel O'Connor (28:13)
Dustin, I want to just get a little information on the company. So you're, I think, founded in 2020, is that correct?

Utkarsh Singh (28:21)
Yes, yes, we have founded in 2020, yes.

Daniel O'Connor (28:22)
2000

and and and just give us some high level to the extent you can share number of employees ballpark and What's your growth trajectory is and if you can name some of the investors if they're VC firms that can be named just a high level summary

Utkarsh Singh (28:37)
Sure, sure. So in total, we are around on-rolls 44 people, a fabulous team, which is spread across people who have 17 to 18 years plus of experience in various fields and specifically our R &D team. In terms of the management, we have a very passionate management, I would say, because in here, the technology also flows from the promoters itself.

because my co-founder and I, we both are technical people. In terms of our growth trajectory, ⁓ in last 30 months, we have already done close to $25 million in revenue. And in the next five years, are, cumulatively, we are going to do close to $500 million of revenue. That is what we are focusing on, and that is the kind of growth.

we are looking at behind me you see our plant only right and this is our hydromet plant and we are going to grow it at least 10x of the scale that we have today within next two years so that is what our focus is and we are not restricting ourselves only to battery recycling because at the end of the day we are experts of extractive metallurgy so we are too you know

a chemical passionate chemical team which is expert of extractive metallurgy. That means we can extract anything from anything on a molecular level. So we are also diversifying in rare earth magnets and we are also looking at different PGM group materials. So that is what everything is going in pipeline. So we are are out to grow.

Daniel O'Connor (30:09)
Very exciting growth trajectory.

Utkarsh Singh (30:11)
Thank you. And our investors are Zephyr Peacock, which is a US based investor. So Zephyr Peacock is one of our key investors.

Daniel O'Connor (30:19)
Excellent.

Utkarsh Singh (30:19)
Thank you.

Dustin Olsen (30:20)
great. So one final question to kind of wrap up the show here. Is there one myth about battery recycling that people often misunderstand that you would like to set the record straight?

Utkarsh Singh (30:31)
Yes definitely I think the one myth is there if you keep your battery at your home after it is over it is going to grow it's not going to grow just give it to a recycler and get it recycled.

Dustin Olsen (30:45)
Very good, very good. Utkarsh, thank you so

much for being on the show with us today. Very insightful and obviously very exciting with the work that you guys are doing and building the recycling part of the supply chain. Hopefully we'll have you again on the show and get an update on where you guys are at and the success that you guys have seen. For those that are watching, if you like this, you found this helpful, please give us a thumbs up wherever you listen to this.

Utkarsh Singh (30:51)
Thank you.

Thank you.

Dustin Olsen (31:11)
podcast that helps the algorithms and expose the show a little bit more. If you don't want to miss a future episode, please like and subscribe. Of course, again, thank you so much for joining us and we'll see you again soon.

Utkarsh Singh (31:22)
Yes, thank you Daniel, thank you Dustin. It's a pleasure and all the very best to you guys also. Thank you. Bye.

Daniel O'Connor (31:26)
Thank you.