The Aluminium Extruders and Manufacturers Association of India (ALEMAI) launched its "Aluminium Bharat 2026" initiative with a clear and urgent message: India's secondary aluminium sector — the recyclers and remelters who convert scrap into usable ingot and billet — is under serious strain, and without policy intervention, the supply constraints and quality challenges they face will cascade down to affect every foundry and casting unit that depends on secondary metal. The initiative has catalysed a broader conversation about the structural vulnerabilities in India's aluminium recycling ecosystem.
The Scrap Supply Bottleneck
India's secondary aluminium recyclers are facing a tightening scrap supply situation that has multiple causes. Domestically generated aluminium scrap — end-of-life vehicles, industrial offcuts, packaging waste — is growing but remains insufficient to meet the expanding appetite of India's downstream aluminium processing industry. Global scrap markets have also tightened, with major scrap-generating economies including the United States, Europe, and Japan increasingly retaining scrap domestically to feed their own recycling industries. This has reduced the volume of aluminium scrap available for export to India and pushed up international scrap prices. Indian recyclers who depend on imported scrap as a feedstock supplement are therefore facing both volume constraints and higher input costs simultaneously.
ALEMAI's Policy Demands
Through the Aluminium Bharat 2026 platform, ALEMAI has called for several specific policy interventions. The most prominent is relief on import duties applied to aluminium scrap — a persistent demand that echoes the separate petition filed by the Metal Recycling Association of India (MRAI) to the PMO in July 2026 seeking abolition of the 2.5% Basic Customs Duty on aluminium scrap imports. ALEMAI has also called for quality standards and certification frameworks for domestically traded aluminium scrap, arguing that the absence of standardized grading and testing protocols means recyclers frequently receive contaminated or misrepresented material that raises production costs and reduces output quality. A third demand involves government support for formalized scrap collection infrastructure — building the domestic scrap supply chain from the ground up rather than depending on import policy alone.
Quality Challenges in Secondary Aluminium
The quality dimension of the secondary aluminium problem is particularly relevant for casting units. Aluminium scrap sourced from informal channels — auto dismantlers, scrap dealers without chemistry testing capability — often contains elevated levels of iron, silicon, copper, or zinc that fall outside the specification of standard casting alloys like LM25 or LM6. When a remelter processes such scrap without rigorous sorting and chemistry control, the resulting ingot may be nominally labelled as a standard alloy but with composition drift that causes casting defects downstream. For foundries, this means more rejection, more rework, and more metal loss — all of which add to production cost. ALEMAI's push for quality standards in secondary aluminium is therefore directly aligned with the interests of casting units, even if the association primarily represents extruders rather than foundries.
Impact on Foundries Dependent on Secondary Metal
The vast majority of Indian aluminium foundries — particularly in clusters like Kolhapur, Rajkot, and Coimbatore — use secondary aluminium ingot rather than primary metal as their primary feedstock. Secondary metal is typically 15–25% cheaper than primary LME-grade aluminium, making it the economically rational choice for price-sensitive casting operations. Any sustained tightening of secondary aluminium supply therefore represents a direct cost threat to these foundries. If scrap availability constrains secondary ingot production, prices rise and the cost advantage over primary metal narrows — or in extreme cases, disappears. Foundries that have not developed relationships with multiple secondary ingot suppliers, or that have not explored direct scrap procurement, are most exposed to this risk.
What the Industry Should Watch
The Aluminium Bharat 2026 initiative has placed India's secondary aluminium supply chain issues firmly on the policy agenda. Whether the government responds with meaningful import duty relief, quality standardization frameworks, or scrap collection infrastructure investment will significantly shape the input cost environment for Indian foundries over the next three to five years. For casting unit owners and managers, the message is to stay engaged with industry association communications, diversify metal sourcing, and invest in incoming material testing capability — because the secondary aluminium landscape is in flux, and those who adapt proactively will be better positioned than those who wait for the supply situation to resolve itself.