DGFT bans export of lithium-ion battery black mass from India

From November 10, a tonne of shredded lithium-ion battery, the grey powder recyclers call black mass, cannot legally leave India.

A notification from the Directorate General of Foreign Trade, No. 49/2026-27, changed the export policy for this material, listed under customs code ITC(HS) 85491400, from "Free" to "Prohibited" with immediate effect, "until further orders," as TaxGuru's reading of the order lays out. Existing contracts get a narrow transitional window under the Foreign Trade Policy, but new shipments of black mass out of India stop now.

For a reader in India this is not a small customs tweak. Every electric car, scooter and rickshaw battery sold here eventually gets shredded into black mass, and that powder carries the lithium, cobalt, nickel and manganese that India otherwise imports almost entirely from China, South Korea and Indonesia. Whether that metal gets refined at a plant in Gujarat or Karnataka, or boxed up and shipped to a refinery in China and shipped back as finished salt, decides who captures the value and who feeds the cathode lines of gigafactories that Tata's Agratas, Exide Energy Solutions and Reliance are all building.

The problem the DGFT is trying to fix is described plainly in its own reasoning, reported by Maritime Gateway: large volumes of domestically generated black mass have flowed overseas even as some Indian recyclers, short of feedstock, have had to import the same material to keep their own refining lines running. Attero's co-founder and chief executive, Nitin Gupta, has made the refiners' case for some time. "Attero has built a capacity to refine up to 15,000 MT of battery blackmass a year, backed by proprietary technology," he told EVreporter, arguing the country should not keep surrendering that feedstock to plants abroad.

Not everyone on the recycling side cheers the ban. The same EVreporter survey of the industry found shredders who sell black mass, rather than refine it themselves, pointing out that overseas buyers in China and South Korea have often paid more than domestic refiners do. Lohum's Pratyush Sinha took the refiners' position anyway: "At Lohum, we think that India has a certain domestic demand for Cobalt, and it is important that this demand is met." Whether that demand gets met at a price shredders find fair is the question the notification does not answer.

The gap between shredding and refining

By one industry estimate reported by EVreporter, India's battery shredders had already built roughly 70,000 tonnes a year of capacity to break down old packs, well ahead of the roughly 60,000 tonnes a year of refining capacity that turns that powder into usable metal, and even that refining capacity has been running under used.

The ban is the enforcement end of a bet the government placed a year earlier. In September 2025 the Cabinet cleared a Rs 1,500 crore Incentive Scheme for Critical Mineral Recycling under the National Critical Mineral Mission, running through FY2030-31, meant to pull in Rs 8,000 crore of fresh investment and build 270 kilotonnes of recycling capacity to produce 40 kilotonnes of critical minerals, as IBEF's summary of the scheme sets out.

India is not alone in making this move. An analysis by Shanghai Metals Market notes the European Union already restricts black mass exports and the United States has erected its own barriers on lithium battery scrap, so New Delhi's notification fits a pattern of governments trying to keep recycled battery metal inside their own borders rather than let it fund someone else's refinery.

What the notification does not fix is price. Nothing in it compels a domestic refiner to pay a shredder what a buyer in Seoul or Shenzhen once did. That tonne of black mass has to stay in India now. Who ends up wanting it enough to pay for it properly is still an open question.

Sources

• DGFT Prohibits Export of Lithium-Ion Battery Black Mass: Notification No. 49/2026-27
• DGFT bans export of lithium-ion battery black mass to boost domestic critical mineral recovery
• Government tightens lithium-ion battery black mass export curbs: stakeholders share perspective
• Customs Department Takes Note of Mislabelled Black Mass Exports from India
• Cabinet clears Rs 1,500 crore (US$ 170.4 million) scheme to promote critical mineral recycling
• SMM Analysis: India Bans Black Mass Exports, Retaining the Value of Recycled Materials Domestically