CMR Green Technologies is India’s largest metal recycler - a business built on the simple truth that aluminium can be melted and remade forever without losing its quality. Founded in 2005 by Mohan Agarwal and his father, the company started with a single plant making solid alloy ingots, but its defining move came in 2008 when it began delivering molten aluminium directly to customer factories, a just-in-time model that locks in demand and saves customers money. Everything the company has done since - building 13 plants across eight states, becoming the world’s 12th-largest recycler, and partnering with Japanese industrial giants - follows the same logic: put a plant right next to a customer, supply liquid metal that no distant competitor can match, and turn scrap into a recurring, hard-to-leave relationship.
Business segments
Two engines feed one recycling machine - a dominant aluminium alloy business that supplies molten metal to India’s auto industry, and a smaller multi-metal operation that extracts value from the same scrap pile.
1. Aluminium recycling: the liquid-metal moat
The company melts scrap aluminium and delivers it molten, straight to customer furnaces - a service only a neighbour can offer, and one that saves carmakers roughly 6-7% on every tonne.
- Liquid delivery locks in the customer - molten aluminium is transported in insulated crucibles within a 20-25 kilometre radius and must arrive within 45-60 minutes, so once a plant is built beside a customer, no distant rival can compete for that supply. The customer saves 2-3% from reduced melt loss, about 3% in energy, and another 1% in operational efficiencies compared to buying solid ingots they would have to re-melt themselves.
- Roughly every second vehicle uses its metal - the company holds a 42-45% share of the cast alloy segment serving India’s automotive industry by volume, supplying “mostly all” two-wheeler and four-wheeler OEMs including Hero, Maruti Suzuki, Honda, Bajaj, and Royal Enfield, as well as Tier 1 suppliers like Rockman and Endurance. These relationships are 17 to more than 19 years old, with repeat revenue at 97% in FY26.
- Cheap, dirty scrap is the raw material advantage - the company buys lower-cost mixed scrap that requires sophisticated sorting, sourcing from 198 suppliers across 73 countries, with 74% of raw material imported in FY26 and a dedicated buying subsidiary in the United States, the largest source of quality scrap. Its plants deploy heavy-media flotation, induction sorters, colour sorters, X-ray transmission, and laser-based spectroscopy to separate metals that others cannot process economically.
- Patents protect the delivery system - the company holds patents on the safe road transportation of liquid metal and on process control at customer sites, and has a patent-pending automated dashboard that monitors real-time furnace levels at the customer’s plant to trigger just-in-time deliveries. Quality rejections sit at just 0.07% across the last three fiscal years.
- Capacity dwarfs the nearest competitor - total installed aluminium alloy capacity is 4,70,300 tonnes per year across 13 plants, roughly four times larger than the next domestic recycled-aluminium player, giving it an overall market share of 10-12% by volume in a fragmented industry. Two more plants are under construction - one in Tamil Nadu for electric-vehicle materials and one in Haryana for an existing customer - both expected to start in FY27.
2. Zinc and other non-ferrous metals: the bonus from the scrap pile
The same plants and sorting lines that feed the aluminium business also extract zinc, copper, brass, stainless steel, lead, and magnesium - turning the leftover scrap into a second revenue stream.
- Multi-metal sorting from one feedstock - the company’s 13 recycling units and its array of segregation technologies recover non-aluminium metals from the mixed scrap it imports, manufacturing zinc alloy ingots and separating stainless steel, copper, brass, lead, and magnesium for sale. This engine contributed 18.81% of revenue in FY26 without requiring a separate plant network.
- Blue-chip buyers for the by-product - large industrial customers include Jindal Stainless for stainless steel and Aurubis of Germany for copper and other non-ferrous materials, giving the company assured offtake for metals that are secondary to its aluminium focus.
Group structure and partners
Three Japanese joint ventures give the company technology, customer access, and a head start in green aluminium - and CMR holds the majority stake in every one.
- CMR Nikkei India (74% owned) - partnered since 2012 with Nikkei MC Aluminium, Japan’s second-largest aluminium producer, this subsidiary makes and sells aluminium ingots and liquid metal, and is building the new Bawal plant in Haryana for an existing customer.
- CMR-Toyotsu Aluminium India (70% owned) - partnered with Toyota Tsusho of the Toyota Group, this subsidiary supplies liquid aluminium and uses its partner’s reach to strengthen customer relationships; it is constructing the Shoolagiri plant inside a Future Mobility Park to serve electric-vehicle production.
- CMR NLM Eco Aluminium (80% stake) - formed in 2025 with Nippon Light Metal, Japan’s largest wrought-alloy company, this joint venture brings technical know-how for billet casting and is building a low-carbon billet supply system, opening the door to construction and solar-industry customers beyond automotive.
- No royalties, no minority control - CMR is the majority partner in all three ventures and pays no royalty to any JV partner, making it the only domestic recycler with multiple joint ventures alongside global Japanese players.