How CMR Became India’s Aluminum Recycling Giant | Every 2nd Vehicle Uses Its Metal | Business News

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]expected to be at about 94% of long period average. But shifting focus to primary markets then CMR Green is all set to launch its fully OFS IPO on the 3rd of June with price band set at 102 to 192 rupees per share. Sajid Monga caught up with the management. Let's take a look at the slides of this conversation.

[00:00:21]>> I'll start off firstly with myself. I started working in 1986 and in the last 40 years recycling and primarily focused on aluminum is the only thing that I have done.

[00:00:35]It's always been my dream to build an organization which will last 100 years. For that what I have very consciously followed is that one uh we have stuck to the core.

[00:00:51]Then we have culture is everything. So we build a culture of integrity, of change, and of innovation and right down to the worker level. And then growth is a constant that we must have. Uh coming to our business, aluminum recycling has a very bright future because aluminum's carbon recycled aluminum's carbon imprint is only 29080 290 kg per ton against about 16,000 kg in case of primary aluminum. So we will keep seeing more and more recycled metal in usage and aluminum has that unique advantage of being uh endlessly recyclable. The first aluminum ever produced still would be in use.

[00:01:49]Coming to CMR, CMR is uh four times bigger than its nearest competition in the country. We are also amongst the largest in the world. Up to now, we have majorly been servicing the auto industry where we have a nearly 45% market share, which means really that every second vehicle that you see on the road, be it a car, be it a motorcycle, be it any other vehicle, uh that comes with aluminum supplied from CMR.

[00:02:24]So, having captured that uh market share, we have now diversified to put up one uh a plant for uh producing billets and sheet ingots, uh which services extrusions and sheet requirements. And two very strategic, we have put up a used beverage can recycling plant where we supply liquid aluminum recycled liquid aluminum to Hindalco Industries. So, that is also very strategic because it is the new metal is being now sourced as a recycled metal by the primary industry, and it is not only in India, it is a trend which is catching up across the world. They say by the year 2050, actually recycled metal will overtake the primary uh metal um primary aluminum, and would actually be in most of the other uh metals also, not only in aluminum, because recycling as a theme uh is very important for the environment, and we'd keep growing. So, all these things put together, uh uh like while we're getting into these two diversified segments of uh extrusion sheets and beverage can recycling, actually doubles our serviceable uh market. So we were earlier in 48% of the overall recycled market. Now we are servicing nearly 100% of the recycled aluminum market.

[00:04:08]Aluminum still forms only about 78 to 80% of our turnover top line. 20% 22% of our uh production and growth comes from non-aluminum like brass, copper, zinc, stainless, and magnesium. So we are very hopeful and we have actually always been very hopeful and confident about the growth prospects of our company. We have recorded a CAGR of 23% since our inception. Uh we are we have 13 locations across the country and we can cover both east, west, north, and south, all the four corners of the country. We have we're near to our customers with these many locations. So I suppose these are things which really help us to uh be what we are and grow uh in the future.

[00:05:21]>> Hm. Akshay, if you can give us a sense of uh the kind of supply chain that you have and how are you managing that supply chain? You're you're closer to your clients, but what do what about the supply chain for processing the recycled aluminum? How how do you look at it?

[00:05:43]>> So India happens to be having a dearth of scrap, which is why scrap needs to be imported from around the world. So, we have we import scrap from over 73 countries around the world from many suppliers, and we are very proud of the relationships that we have with our suppliers, which are also as old as we are. And the geographical diversification gives us a kind of a competitive edge because we are always we we can always leverage the arbitrage from different markets around the world.

[00:06:25]>> Interesting.

[00:06:27]How are you managing the kind of cost escalations which are there in your production? And you know, Mr. Mohan, if you can give us a sense of the pass-through of this cost, how does it work for you?

[00:06:44]>> If you look at the auto industry, auto industry works kind of on a cost plus basis. So, we are able to pass through the increase or decrease of the aluminum prices or in the currency to our customer. There is monthly price changes, so it is in fact there is no lag in which we pass through the price changes to our customer.

[00:07:15]>> Actually, if you look at the EBITDA margin for 9-month period, it was around 5% 5.2% for you.

[00:07:22]Is that the nominal EBITDA margin in a recycling industry like aluminum? Or as you diversify to various other metals, this margin can go up.

[00:07:36]>> So, we would say that 5% is kind of normal when you talk talk about aluminum recycling rather we would be higher more profitable when we compare to our aluminum recycling peers. To expand margin further what we are doing is we are going into value added products as Baba talked about which is billets which is which has slightly better margins and what's what's more important than EBITDA margin for us is ROC which is something that we focus on and we have a good ROC number we've constantly demonstrated that.

[00:08:20]>> Mr. Modi give us give give us a sense of the industries that you cater to you spoke about the fact that the top companies that you cater is auto but beside auto uh which are the other other big because top three clients of yours if I'm not wrong they account for nearly 20% or 21% of your sales.

[00:08:42]Top five around 32 and top 10 around 50.

[00:08:45]So give us a sense of the industry that you cater to.

[00:08:51]>> So in the auto space we cater to practically all the OEMs in the country and to all practically all the tier ones whoever use aluminum on the auto space.

[00:09:05]Our biggest customer is less than 10% of our turnover. So we do not really have a customer concentration risk. On the non-auto space like our one big strategic customer is Hindalco Industries which is a primary producers and we supply liquid metal recycled to them.

[00:09:27]Then we have Jindal Stainless as our large customer for stainless steel. So if you see our pedigree then we basically work with very large customers with we usually work with the leaders in those industries and now at this moment of time we are servicing auto, we are servicing sheet, we are servicing extrusion and we are servicing packaging which more or less is the whole gamut of where recycle recycled aluminum is going at this moment of time in the country and also around the world it is more or less the similar situation. The consuming sectors are these.

[00:10:16]And the recycled content in all these is growing.

[00:10:21]There are EPR regulations which is going to force people to increase recycling but otherwise also because of the positive environmental impact of recycling.

[00:10:36]I suppose every single customer is demanding more and more recycled metal.

[00:10:56]>> [music]