Catalytic converters
How catalytic converter recycling works, step by step
There are six steps between a converter coming off a vehicle and metal coming out of a refinery. Most disputes in this trade happen at step three, and they are avoidable.
1. Collection
Material reaches us from four places: registered vehicle scrapping facilities operating under the scrappage framework, converter traders who aggregate from workshops, local dismantling yards, and production waste from automotive manufacturers. Each of those needs something slightly different — an RVSF needs documentation that survives an audit, a dismantler needs collection on a schedule that does not stop their yard, an OEM needs confidentiality — and the collection arrangement is built around that.
2. Identification and sorting
Units are counted in and sorted by the categories that predict content: ceramic or metallic substrate, petrol or diesel, two-wheeler or four-wheeler. This is the step that decides how many separate lots a consignment becomes. Mixing a diesel oxidation catalyst into a petrol three-way lot does not average out — it makes both halves harder to settle honestly.
3. Decanning and homogenisation
The substrate is removed from the steel shell and milled to a uniform powder. This is the step that matters most and the one most often rushed. An assay measures the sample, not the lot; the sample only represents the lot if the lot has genuinely been made uniform first. Almost every assay dispute we have seen traces back to a lot that was sampled before it was properly homogenised.
4. Sampling and assay
A representative sample is drawn from the homogenised material and assayed for platinum, palladium and rhodium. The result comes back in grammes per tonne. Where a lot needs critical-minerals analysis, or where the numbers are going to be argued over, we engage an independent laboratory rather than asking anyone to take our word for it.
5. Settlement
Payable value is the assayed metal content, priced against the metal prices agreed for the lot, less treatment and refining charges. That proposal goes to the supplier in writing with the assay attached. If it is disputed, an independent laboratory acts as umpire and the umpire figure settles it.
6. Refining
The prepared material is exported to the refineries we hold contracts with in Europe, Korea and Japan, where the metals are separated and refined back to market grade. We handle the freight ourselves from the largest logistics hub in Asia, which is what lets us collect from anywhere in India and still move on a predictable schedule.
Where the time goes
Collection and sorting are quick. Decanning, homogenising and assaying are not, and trying to compress them is how lots get settled badly. If a buyer offers you a price on the spot for an unsorted, unassayed consignment, that price has their uncertainty priced into it, and the uncertainty is yours to keep.
