India’s Critical Minerals Workshop: Boosting Private Sector & Recycling

The workshop, titled "Developing the Critical Minerals Value Chain for a Sustainable Future," brought together stakeholders from government, industry, academia, and international institutions to deliberate on strategies to strengthen the country's critical mineral ecosystem.

Addressing the gathering, Piyush Goyal, Secretary, Ministry of Mines, emphasised the need for greater participation of private players to accelerate the development of the sector. He highlighted the government's policy push under the National Critical Minerals Mission and underscored the importance of building a resilient and self-reliant supply chain through reforms, ease of doing business, and targeted incentives.

He noted that critical minerals are central to India's energy transition, economic growth, and technological advancement, and called for accelerated efforts across exploration, processing, and recycling.

The deliberations highlighted the growing importance of secondary resources such as mine waste, tailings, slags and industrial residues as viable and cost-effective sources of critical minerals. Participants also stressed the role of urban mining, particularly through recycling of e-waste and end-of-life batteries, supported by the government's incentive framework.

During technical sessions, experts discussed key themes including unlocking value from secondary sources, emerging technologies and pilot projects, strengthening the recycling ecosystem, and addressing policy, regulatory and technology gaps for scaling up the sector.

Experts from organisations such as Hindalco Industries, Rubamin, Attero, Lohum, ALTMIN and Gujarat Mineral Development Corporation, along with global institutions like the World Bank, shared insights on technological readiness, commercial viability and policy enablers required to scale recovery efforts.

Discussions also underscored the need to translate laboratory innovations into scalable industrial solutions, alongside enabling policy frameworks to attract private investment and foster innovation.

The workshop concluded with a consensus on enhancing coordination between government, industry and academia to accelerate pilot projects and scale proven technologies, with participants describing the deliberations as outcome-oriented and relevant.

- ANI