15th India Minerals & Metals Forum brings policymakers and top steel and mining players together to discuss how exploration, recycling and industrial waste recovery can reduce India's import dependence

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NITI Aayog Bets on Recycling as India's Fastest Route to Critical Minerals Security at ICC's 15th Minerals & Metals Forum

 

At ICC's 15th India Minerals & Metals Forum, Anupam Lahiri says e-waste, battery waste and mine tailings offer a quicker path to self-reliance than new mining

The Indian Chamber of Commerce (ICC) today hosted the 15th edition of its India Minerals & Metals Forum (Ferrous & Non-Ferrous) in the capital, bringing together senior government officials, steel majors and mining companies to discuss how India can build a secure, self-reliant supply chain for critical minerals even as its steel and metals industry scales up sharply over the next two decades.

The forum, themed “Minerals to Metals,” opened with Dr. Pankaj Satija, Chairperson of ICC's National Expert Committee on Minerals & Metals, setting out the scale of the opportunity and the government's current approach to critical minerals. India's list of critical minerals, he noted, now stands at 31 following the recent addition of coking coal, spanning applications from clean energy and electric vehicles to defence, healthcare and advanced manufacturing, with the government working simultaneously across exploration, recycling and recovery from industrial waste.

“Critical minerals are going to play a defining role in India's future. They are essential for everything from clean energy and electric vehicles to defence, healthcare and advanced manufacturing. India has already identified 31 critical minerals, and the government's approach is moving on three fronts—speeding up domestic exploration, treating e-waste as a valuable resource through recycling, and recovering critical minerals from industrial waste such as steel slag and fly ash. More than 500 blocks are already under exploration, while partnerships with countries like the US and Argentina are helping strengthen our supply chain. We still have a long way to go, but if the government, industry and researchers work together, India can steadily build a secure and self-reliant critical minerals ecosystem,” Dr. Satija said.

He also pointed to recent international engagement on the subject, noting that India and the United States had deepened cooperation through the FORGE initiative on February 4, 2026, followed by the PACT Initiative on February 20, 2026, with discussions during a subsequent visit by the US Secretary of State covering lithium refining, cathode materials, recycling, feedstock corridors and synthetic graphite production. He said India was similarly expanding engagement with Argentina and other Latin American markets to widen access to mineral resources.

Mr Anupam Lahiri, Programme Director, NITI Aayog, followed with the policy think tank's view on recycling as the most immediate lever available to Indian industry, arguing that with domestic exploration still years away from yielding proven, mineable reserves, recovery from existing waste streams offered India its fastest route to reducing import dependence.

“India's critical minerals journey cannot depend on mining alone. Domestic exploration will take time, so we also need to focus on the resources that are already around us. E-waste, battery waste, mine overburden and tailings have the potential to become important sources of critical minerals if we can build the right ecosystem around them. That means making recycling commercially viable, creating the right incentives for industry and helping new technologies move beyond the pilot stage. Overseas partnerships will continue to play an important role, but in the near term, recycling offers India the fastest and most practical path to strengthening its critical minerals supply,” he said.

Mr Lahiri disclosed that NITI Aayog has constituted a technical committee, with presentations from Coal India, Singareni Collieries, Jindal Steel and Adani, to assess how much critical mineral value can be recovered from mine tailings and overburden dumps, citing Neyveli Lignite Corporation’s success in extracting rare earth elements from fly ash as an early proof point. He flagged unresolved policy questions around how royalties should apply when critical minerals are recovered from an already-licensed coal mine, and noted that state-run KABIL was pursuing overseas mineral assets in Australia, Argentina and, more recently, the United States, though several host countries require ore processing to happen locally before export, limiting downstream value capture for India.

Mr Sushanta Kumar Mishra, Executive In-charge of Tata Steel's Ferro Alloys & Minerals Division, linked the critical minerals push to India's steel expansion plans, with national output targeted to rise from current levels of roughly 150-160 million tonnes to 300 million tonnes by 2030 and 500 million tonnes by 2047. He said Tata Steel, which currently operates around 24 million tonnes of capacity against an ambition of 40 million tonnes, was steering its ferroalloys business toward high-value products, targeting nearly 80% of its portfolio in value-added segments, while research at its Sukinda Valley operations on recovering nickel and cobalt from chromite overburden had already produced successful nickel pig iron trials in India. He called for greater regulatory clarity on how minerals recovered from mine overburden should be classified under existing licensing norms.

Offering an industry-wide perspective, Mr Tushar Chakraborty, Executive Director at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India LLP, said the sector's focus needed to extend beyond output targets to cost competitiveness and supply chain resilience.

“As demand for steel, non-ferrous metals and other industrial commodities continues to rise, the conversation has to move beyond production targets. The real challenge is ensuring that this growth remains competitive and sustainable. That means improving productivity, securing reliable access to raw materials and building supply chains that can withstand future disruptions. India has set ambitious milestones for 2030 and 2047, but achieving them will depend as much on cost competitiveness as on capacity expansion. The industry now needs to focus on creating a resilient raw material ecosystem that supports long-term growth while keeping Indian manufacturing globally competitive,” Mr Chakraborty said.

Mr N. D. Rao, President-Projects at Atha & Amalgam Steel Group, framed the debate around mineralogy, noting that iron ore grade varies sharply by mineral type, from magnetite at roughly 72.3% iron content to hematite at 69.8%, goethite at around 62.5% and siderite below 50%, directly affecting processing costs and recovery. He pointed to emerging reduction roasting technology, now being trialled at a Bhubaneswar laboratory, that can convert lower-grade goethite and limonite ores into magnetite, lifting iron content to 67-70%. Drawing on his own experience leading bioleaching trials with Professor K. A. Natarajan of the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, and Hindustan Zinc's decades-old programme recovering silver from zinc processing waste, which helped make India the world's largest silver producer, Mr Rao cited Vadodara-based Rubamin's success in recovering lithium from e-waste as evidence of the commercial potential in India's “waste-to-wealth” approach, while noting that the country's beach sand rare earth reserves remained underexploited due to limited private sector participation.

Mr R R Sathpathy, Executive Director-Exploration and Beneficiation at Lloyds Metals & Energy, distinguished between scientific, sustainable and responsible mining, arguing that Indian miners had mastered the first two but were only beginning the third. He detailed the transformation of the company's Surjagad iron ore mine in Maharashtra's Gadchiroli district, once known chiefly for insurgency-related instability, into a fully electrified operation, with battery-powered dumpers, shovels and loaders cutting carbon emissions from around 11-12 kg per tonne to 3-3.5 kg per tonne, with a target of 1-1.5 kg per tonne once a planned 110 MW solar-and-wind hybrid power supply comes online later this year. He said the mine's ongoing 45-million-tonne beneficiation plant, being built in three 15-million-tonne modules with the first due by September 2027, had extended the site's usable resource base beyond a billion tonnes by lowering the cut-off ore grade, while the surrounding community had seen sustained local employment, a company-run school and a 100-bed hospital.