Rocklink India Pvt. Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Rocklink, has announced the establishment of its first integrated recycling facility in India. Located in the UPSIDC Industrial Area in Sikandrabad, Uttar Pradesh, the plant is designed to strengthen the country’s capabilities in critical material recovery and support the development of circular supply chains.
The facility is equipped to handle lithium-ion battery recycling, rare earth magnet dismantling, and processing of metal-bearing industrial waste. It will play a key role in enabling sustainable resource management, particularly in the context of India’s growing electric mobility ecosystem.
In its initial phase, the plant will have a lithium-ion battery recycling capacity of 10,000 tonnes per year. Additionally, it will process rare earth magnets at a capacity of 60 tonnes per month.
Further enhancing its capabilities, the company is set to commission a rare earth chloride processing line by Q1 2026, with an annual production capacity of 1,500 tonnes. This expansion is expected to significantly boost Rocklink India’s contribution to the domestic rare earth value chain.
Commenting on the development, Leonard Alexander Ansorge, Director of Rocklink India Pvt. Ltd., said, “The establishment of this facility marks an important step in building advanced recycling infrastructure for critical materials in India. With capabilities to process lithium-ion batteries and rare earth magnets, we aim to support the development of a circular ecosystem for critical raw materials that are essential to electric mobility, renewable energy systems, and advanced manufacturing.”
Rocklink India’s EPR-registered lithium-ion battery recycling plant is designed to process 95 different types of pre- and post-consumer battery scrap materials. The company completed the commissioning phase of its self-developed lithium-ion recycling technology (R2), which safely processes battery scrap into valuable components while removing hazardous volatile organic compounds.
The technology enables the facility to process multiple battery formats, sizes, and cell chemistries while capturing volatile organic compounds through an encapsulated process and advanced waste gas treatment systems. The recycling process achieves over 98 percent recovery efficiency for metals such as aluminium, copper, and iron, while producing high-purity black mass suitable for further refining.
In addition to recycling, the company plans to integrate battery refurbishment operations into the facility. This will enable the safe reuse of viable battery cells through international standards for testing, balancing, and pack manufacturing, extending battery life cycles and improving resource efficiency.
The facility also includes dedicated capabilities for rare earth magnet recycling, covering permanent magnet alloys such as NdFeB, SmCo, and AlNiCo, which are commonly used in electric motors, generators, and industrial equipment. Semi-automated dismantling lines will process magnet-containing assemblies into homogeneous batches, improving traceability and recycling efficiency.
Rocklink India is also expanding its Magcycle™ reverse logistics model, previously implemented in Europe since 2018, to the Indian market. The system enables the structured collection and routing of magnet scrap into appropriate recycling channels while strengthening circular material flows.
The company follows a “Know Your Material (KYM)” approach, supported by in-house laboratory testing and grading systems that analyse elemental composition and surface oxidation to determine the most suitable recycling pathway. Materials not suitable for direct recycling routes will be processed into rare earth chlorides at the upcoming facility’s processing unit, which operates a 22-metre direct-heated rotary kiln for the safe calcination of metal-bearing industrial waste.
Through collaborations with technology startups, research institutions, and government stakeholders, Rocklink India aims to advance dismantling automation, improve material recovery efficiencies, and contribute to India’s long-term efforts to strengthen domestic supply chains for critical raw materials.
