Beyond Recycling: How An Indian Company Is Turning Industrial Waste Into Precision Metal

Most of India's manufacturing runs on raw materials that are either mined fresh or imported, and both routes have gotten less predictable in recent years, as commodity prices swing and supply chains for critical metals concentrate around a handful of countries. One answer gaining ground is to stop treating industrial waste as waste at all and start treating it as a raw material sitting right where it was produced.

Runaya, a sustainable manufacturing company providing advanced technological solutions for circular economy and waste-to-wealth innovations, has built its business on this. It runs on linked operations: recovering base & critical metals like aluminium, zinc, cobalt, lead, cadmium, and copper from smelter residues.

Any aluminum smelter produces a byproduct: a grey, gritty residue called dross, which is skimmed off the top of molten metal. Over 4 million tons of dross is generated globally every year, and most of it ends up in landfills. It holds a significant share of entrapped metal.

Runaya’s latest venture suggests that their ambition has grown beyond simply keeping that metal out of landfills.
From Landfill to Ingredient

TAHA’s process, licensed to Runaya, extracts nearly 90% of the available aluminium from dross without the need for external heat.
The recovered metal carries one of the lowest certified carbon footprints for Aluminium anywhere in the world. The leftover residue post metal recovery is converted to Steel Slag Conditioners, which improve alloy yield and operational efficiencies during steelmaking.

In FY 2024-25, Runaya processed close to 39,000 tons of aluminium dross at their facilities in Jharsuguda & Korba, recovering over 14,500 tons of aluminium, according to the company's latest sustainability report, which is the actual basis of sending zero waste from this process to landfill rather than an unverified figure.

Beyond Aluminium

Aluminium is only one part of the business. A separate unit located in Rajasthan recovers base & critical metals - zinc, lead, cadmium, cobalt and copper from smelter residue - metals that feed EV batteries, electronics and pharmaceuticals, and that India otherwise imports.

The Bigger Leap

Steel additions are a profitable business, but fundamentally they are recycling - using up old scrap material that is being added as a lower-grade input.

This year, what is new is a joint venture with Germany's Eckart to build India's first gas-atomized aluminium powder plant, at Jharsuguda in Odisha.

Gas-atomised powder sits in a different league altogether.

It's used in 3D printing, protective coatings, and components for the automotive, aerospace, solar and defence industries - sectors with close to zero tolerance for contamination, and ones that have never had reason to specify ordinary recycled aluminium.

That's the shift worth watching. Runaya is expanding beyond critical & strategic metal recovery into advanced manufacturing for high-end applications. Its new joint venture with Germany’s Eckart to build India’s first gas-atomized aluminium powder plant at Jharsuguda, Odisha, will mark Runaya’s evolution from recovering value from industrial residues to precision manufacturing.

Why It Matters Beyond One Company

According to Runaya’s Sustainability Report 2024-25, India's aluminium demand is projected to touch 9.5 million tons by 2030 even as the world faces a supply deficit. At the same time, global demand for critical minerals - cobalt, lithium, and copper used in EV batteries and electronics is expected to rise sharply through 2040, and most of that supply is concentrated in a handful of countries.

Runaya recovers zinc, lead, cadmium, cobalt and copper from smelter residues in Rajasthan rather than mining virgin ore.

Naivedya Agarwal, the company's co-founder and managing director, has described this as building "an integrated circular platform" that supports "long-term domestic security across energy, mobility, electronics and advanced manufacturing” language that positions the business squarely inside India's push to reduce import dependence on critical minerals.

Scale will decide whether any of these matters beyond any company’s balance sheet. Runaya is dedicated to expanding recovery and alloy capacity. This will determine whether the recovered aluminum and critical metals can be supplied to Indian manufacturers at volume, which will tend to reduce import dependence rather than remaining as a sustainability-showcase product line.

Ultimately, Runaya’s strategy redefines the potential for modern metal recovery.