Lead Recycler Plays Big. Profit Soars. Wall Street Shrugs.

When Your Recycler Becomes a Serial Acquirer

Gravita India is 33 years old. Its founder, Rajat Agrawal, started in 1992. The company processes battery scrap, lead scrap, aluminum scrap, plastic scrap, rubber scrap — basically, it’s what happens when engineers decide to turn garbage into gold. And they’re shockingly good at it.

Established in 1992, Gravita India is India’s largest lead producer through recycling. The business model is brutally simple: you need a smartphone? It has batteries. Batteries die. Gravita buys the dead batteries, smelts them into pure lead, transforms lead into alloys, sheets, bricks, red lead, and lead oxide. Then sells them back to battery makers, cable manufacturers, die-casting companies. Rinse and repeat 4.9 million times a year.

The company has expanded into aluminum recycling, plastic recycling, rubber recycling, and just announced a leap into copper recycling via the ₹559 crore acquisition of Rashtriya Metal Industries Limited (RMIL) — a 910-crore revenue copper alloy manufacturer. This is not a small pivot. This is a company that used to be a one-trick pony deciding to become the entire circus.

In FY25, Gravita hit ₹3,869 crore revenue (TTM: ₹4,130 Cr). Profit grew at 33.5% annually. ROCE sits at 21.5%. The stock has delivered 50% returns over 3 years and 70% over 5 years. But in the last 12 months, it’s down 6%. Welcome to the paradox of being a smallcap that executes too well.

Turning Discarded Batteries Into Shiny Things

Here’s what Gravita actually does: 1. A car battery dies. It’s useless. Lead inside is still valuable. 2. Gravita buys the battery from aggregators at a few hundred rupees. 3. They shred it, extract the lead, smelt it in massive furnaces at 1,100°C. 4. Pure lead comes out. They transform it into alloys (hardening agents like antimony/tin), sheets for X-rays, bricks for radiation shielding, red lead for primers, lead oxide for paints. 5. Sell to OEMs at 2-3x the base price. 6. Profit flows to shareholders and capex fund.

The company runs 12 recycling plants across India (Kathua, Jaipur, Jaipur SEZ, Chittoor, Mundra in Gujarat), plus international footprint: Sri Lanka, Ghana, Senegal, Mozambique, Tanzania, Togo, Romania. Installed capacity: 3.40+ lakh MT annually. Q3 utilization: 63% domestic, 40% overseas (because they move material where arbitrage favors India).

Revenue mix: Lead 87%, Aluminum 9%, Plastics 4%, and soon Copper 1-2% (post-RMIL). They serve 325+ customers globally across 32 countries. Distribution: 33 own recycling yards + 1,900+ sourcing touchpoints. In Q3, they procured 52,982 tonnes across all segments.

Q3 FY26: Flat Revenue, 32% Profit Jump. The Plot Twist.