IESW 2024: Collaboration, investments and resilient supply chain crucial for advanced battery manufacturing

The Day 2 of the India Energy Storage Week 2024 kicked off with a high-power panel deliberating on India's roadmap for advanced battery manufacturing. 

Opening the panel discussion, Dr. Raghunath Anant (Ramesh) Mashelkar, Former Director General, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) discussed the steps India needs to take in order to achieve hundreds of GWh-scale of advanced battery manufacturing. He added India has the potential to emerge No. 1 in storage and potential exporter of clean technologies. 

"As an ecosystem, we need to address the challenges that prevent India from emerging as alternate destination for battery storage," Dr. Mashelkar said.

"We have set the target of 50GWh but I'm happy to see that IESW is thinking big and has set the target of 500GWh of battery manufacturing in India by 2030. India has to be an exponential inspirator," he added.

Moderated by Dr. Rahul Walawalkar, President & MD, CES India and President of IESA, the session opened with Dr. Walawalkar underscoring the need for greater exchange of information and collaboration among several key stakeholders both from India and globally.

Dr. Veena Kumari Dermal spokesperson from the Ministry of Mines, India, discussed the efforts underway by the ministry to secure battery raw materials for the battery industry in India.

Dr. Dermal emphasized in recent years Ministry of Mines efforts have been oriented more toward the exploration of battery minerals. As part of these efforts, the ministry has been in discussions with several countries both in Africa and Latin America to get mineral blocks. At present, they are preparing guidelines for government companies to invest in mineral resources outside India and facilitating those programs, she added.

Vijay Mittal, Joint Secretary, Dept of Heavy Industries, Ministry of Heavy Industries congratulated IESA for building the battery ecosystem and a thriving industry in India.

"Thanks to the information dissemination by IESA, today, we see the industry has a good understanding of battery manufacturing. We are no longer only thinking of battery manufacturing but the entire battery supply chain from critical minerals to intermediate products and recycling."

Sadashiv Samantaray, CEO of KABIL discussed KABIL's efforts in actively pursuing the goal of securing critical material from several countries to help meet India's demand for battery minerals. He noted that KABIL has secured six lithium blocks in Argentina and is engaged in sourcing Lithium and Cobalt in Australia.

Raj Surendran, CEO, Tianqi Lithium Australia Energy Limited discussed the world-class minerals availability in Western Australia -- a critical mineral hotspot -- and Tianqi Lithium's lithium hydroxide plants which will be capable of producing 300,000 tonnes of battery-grade lithium once operational. "We have a great opportunity to collaborate on India's battery manufacturing journey," said Surendran.

Rajat Verma, Founder and CEO at LOHUM discussed critical minerals and the domination by China especially the processing of the minerals. He stressed on the need to indigenize material supply chain and develop mineral processing capabilities within India.

Rakesh Malhotra, Founder of Livguard Energy noted there are opportunities and gaps at all levels of [battery] value chain. In the second wave, India will need more than 5-6 players setting up factories of varying capacities to move from 125 GWh to 500 GWh goal.

"Critical minerals, processing, and application fitments have to be looked into. A piece government can address is how access of know-how be made available and focus on it in terms of implementation," Malhotra added.

For more details of IESW 2024, visit indiaesa.info