Kemistar Corporation began life in 1994 as an amusement company, but over two decades it has reinvented itself twice - first into a supplier of specialty chemicals and agrochemical intermediates, and now into a recycler of the batteries, solar panels and electronics that power the clean-energy transition. The recurring approach is simple: it uses a wholly owned manufacturing subsidiary in Gujarat’s chemical hub to do the heavy industrial work, while the listed parent handles trading and market access. That structure lets the group run a legacy chemicals business and a new circular-economy venture under one roof, with the same plant site and the same in-house technology philosophy.
Business segments
Two businesses at different life stages - a trading-and-manufacturing chemicals engine that has been running for over two decades, and a recycling platform that only just began trial production - both operated through the same subsidiary on the same Dahej industrial site.
1. Specialty chemicals and intermediates: the legacy building-block supplier
The company trades in more than 50 chemical variants and manufactures three key intermediates at its Dahej plant, selling to textile, packaging and pharmaceutical customers across India and a dozen export markets.
- Trading arm with B2B reach - on a standalone basis, the listed parent is a pure trader of finished chemicals, dyes and pigments, with no manufacturing of its own. Its major customers include packaging, plastics, fabrics and pharma companies, and it runs a deferred-revenue incentive scheme for its dealer network.
- Manufacturing sits in the subsidiary - all production happens inside K.P. International Private Limited, which has run multi-location plants since 2000 and now operates a facility on roughly 27,000 square metres inside the Dahej Industrial Estate, a zone with exclusive rights to make certain chemicals in the entire state of Gujarat.
- Three molecules, built in phases - the Dahej plant started commercial production in August 2020 and added a second phase in mid-2021, taking sulfonated-product capacity from 1,200 to 3,000 tonnes per year. It now makes PNTOSA, DNSDA and is expanding into DASDA - a stilbene-based intermediate used worldwide in dyestuffs, optical brighteners, agrochemicals and pharma ingredients.
- Home-grown technology, no outside licences - all production technology has been developed indigenously, with no imported technology and no separate R&D function; the company says the technology is fully absorbed.
- Export footprint across continents - the group serves over 50 customers and has business networks stretching from African countries and Turkey to the USA, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Spain, Bangladesh, Thailand, Korea, Japan and Indonesia.
2. Battery, solar-panel and e-waste recycling: the circular-economy bet
The group has secured environmental clearance to process up to 42,000 tonnes a year of electronic and renewable-energy waste at Dahej, and began trial runs in mid-2025 - aiming to extract precious metals, black mass and rare-earth minerals from the scrap of the energy transition.
- A permit to recycle what others throw away - the subsidiary is authorised by the Gujarat Pollution Control Board for e-waste collection, segregation, refurbishing and dismantling, and in April 2025 received a Consent to Establish amendment for a combined recycling capacity of 42,000 tonnes per annum covering e-waste, Li-ion batteries, lead-acid batteries, solar panels and metal recovery.
- Trial production already underway - by May 2025 the Dahej recycling plant had started trial runs with equipment from top overseas and Indian suppliers, and by August 2025 it obtained a Consent to Operate for 27,000 tonnes per year, with the balance capacity to follow in a later phase.
- Chemical process, not just shredding - the recovery method uses a chemical process to pull precious metals out of black mass, and the company has sought a technology tie-up with an overseas firm, initially looking at a Chinese partner.
- Feedstock agreements already signed - Reliance Industries Limited, Aatmanirbhar Solar, Citizen Solar and Solex Energy have all agreed to supply used or waste solar panels and e-waste, giving the plant a pipeline of material before it even reaches commercial scale.
- Riding regulatory tailwinds - India’s new Extended Producer Responsibility rules will mandate recycling of 70-75% of battery volume, and the Indian Li-ion battery recycling market is projected to grow from roughly $0.1 billion in 2022 to $1 billion by 2030. The formal e-waste recycling rate in India is still below 10%, leaving a large unorganised sector to be captured.
Group structure and partners
Everything flows through one wholly owned subsidiary, K.P. International Private Limited, which holds the manufacturing and recycling assets while the listed parent handles trading and market relationships.
- KPIPL was incorporated in 2007 but has been operational since 2000, with plants at Dahej, Ahmedabad and Sanand; its object clause was amended in May 2024 to add battery recycling, solar-panel recycling, e-waste, metals, plastics, black mass and low-cost green hydrogen production.
- The group has no joint ventures, banks with Punjab National Bank, and its statutory auditor is M/s. N. S. Nanavati & Co..