Electronic waste recycling company Attero Recycling is planning an initial public offering in 2025, chief executive officer and co-founder Nitin Gupta said.
The company is still discussing whether to list shares in India or abroad as it also has major international plans, Gupta said in an interview.
“2025 is when we are planning to go public. The fact is that we are an extremely high-growth company, profit-generating and cashflow-generating, and even from the ESG perspective, the firm has great credentials for an IPO, and we are on track to do that in 2025,” he said.
Gupta also said Attero is in talks for its next equity fundraise. The company last raised $16.5 million in 2014 in a series C funding round led by private equity fund Forum Synergies (India). He said the company plans to increase its revenue to $2 billion with the expansion in its business.
On Thursday, Attero said it plans to build a 15,000 metric tonne lithium-ion battery recycling plant in Telangana with an investment of ₹600 crore. Its current capacity is 4,500 metric tonnes.
“We are putting together around 300,000 tonne per annum capacity for lithium-ion batteries in the next five years. Around 35% of it is being set up in Europe, 35% in the US, 20% in India and 10% in Asia, excluding India. For this, the total investment is around ₹7,500 crore out of which the Indian capacity is supposed to be 60,000 tonne. We already have current capacity of 4,500 tonne. This Telangana plant is an additional capacity of 15,000 tonne,” Gupta said.
He said the total investment in the Telangana plant, which would be set up around 25 km away from Hyderabad, would be ₹600 crore in two phases. He noted that the company is recovering over 98% of battery grade cobalt, lithium carbonate, graphite, nickel (from used batteries) and exporting to top automobile original equipment manufacturers across the world to manufacture new battery cells.
In June this year, the electronic waste recycling company announced its plans to invest $1 billion to expand globally over the next five years. As part of its plan, the firm that also recycles batteries will set up plants in the US, Poland and Indonesia, and also scale up its India operations.
Speaking on the progress of its international plans, Gupta said the plans to set up factories abroad are “well on track”.
In the first phase, Attero plans to invest $500 million to scale its lithium-ion battery recycling capacity to 150,000 tonne by 2025. The European facility is expected to be functional during the ongoing quarter 2022, while the facility in Ohia, US will be operational by the third quarter of 2023.
