Dhawal Shah of Metco Ventures LLP

Dhawal Shah, a partner in and managing director of Metco Ventures LLP, a metals recycling and trading firm based in Mumbai, India, entered the metals recycling industry out of necessity when a shipment of brass planters he had sent to the United States was rejected at the port of entry in New York because it contained rats.

As a college student in the early 1990s, Shah joined Metco, which was brokering and marketing base metals and ferroalloys, part time to handle a new venture: exports of handicrafts from India to North America. “We had a shipment of two loads of brass planters, which were meant for Christmas distribution … and we shipped that to New York,” he says.

When the shipment arrived at the port, Shah got a call at 3 a.m. from his colleague in North America saying Customs had found rats in those containers and rejected the shipment because India recently had had a plague pandemic that was attributed to rodents. “Nobody wanted to touch those containers,” he says.

“The Indian shipper, the exporter, refused to step in and take ownership of the problem, so I was in a real fix,” Shah continues.

Metco offered the material to some of the brass mills in India as brass scrap.

“I had a call from the foundry to whom we sold that he wanted to come and see me,” he says. “I was really, really nervous at that time that this was the end of my career. But he said that he really loved the material and we should sign an exclusive arrangement with them that we’ll be looking after all their scrap sourcing of brass.”

Since those early days, Shah has taken on several leadership roles in the industry, including as president of the Brussels-based Bureau of International Recycling (BIR) Non-Ferrous Metals Division, senior vice president of the Material Recycling Association of India (MRAI) and a committee member of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry’s Metals Committee.

In the following interview, he talks about India’s rapid economic growth and MRAI’s role in policy advocacy.

Q: How has India’s hunger for scrap metal grown and is that appetite poised to grow more?

A: You’re talking about a country poised to become the world’s third-largest economy by 2030. Currently, we are the fifth biggest. … It consistently remains the fastest-growing economy in the world. [In 2024], we are averaging at about 6.5 percent, and perhaps the next few years also suggest that we would be in a 6-percent-plus trajectory. One important thing I want to say is that while we push such high growth, I also must emphasize our per-capita emissions is only about one-third that of the global average. … It’s probusiness and, at the same time, what they have done is … put circularity and sustainability in its central axis. Now, I’m not trying to oversell brand India here, but we are perhaps the only country who achieved its 2030 NDC, as they call it, the nationally determined contribution in the carbon reduction, nine years ahead of schedule. We aim to be carbon neutral by 2070, and our prime minister has made this very compelling for industry, society and all the policymakers, the bureaucrats, alike.

Getting back to scrap consumption, what I see is Indian scrap consumption is likely to grow at 8-10 percent CAGR (compound annual growth rate) over the next five years. And the reason is very simple. What logic tells me is … all the push that is happening on the policy front ... [is] creating a significant impact on availability and consumption, plus the industry’s own need in terms of adapting and expanding through circularity and sustainability. ... People who are going to be invested in it, who are going to be compliant, I think they definitely will have a fine run as far as India is concerned.

Q. Being involved in MRAI and helping create that organization, how does that influence the way you view the industry?

A: MRAI was born about 13 years ago, when the trade was confronted with certain regulatory changes which were absurd and irrelevant. I still remember this meeting we had in that period when there was … a regulatory crisis, and the crisis basically entailed that the traders of and importers of metal scrap would not be allowed to carry on with their activity anymore. It won’t be legally possible. Then, a group of people came together to confront the government.

… [N]obody ever realized, acknowledged, India has an industry which is constantly contributing to its social, economic, environmental transformation. You know, we ourselves at that time had no idea of the scale, the size and the footprint, the impact that we hold.

… After 13 years, we’ve got about almost 10 policy documents of [the] government of India where we have contributed with our knowledge, with suggestions [and] recommendations. We are now a central part of the trades to be represented in all discussions.