Welcome to the Arena from ICR – Conversations with Today's Innovators & Business Leaders Ajay Kochhar, President, CEO, and Co-Founder, Li-Cycle – Powering the Future: Leading the charge in sustainability through revolutionary lithium-ion recycling
Lithium-ion batteries are playing a big part in clean energy development, but making the battery itself clean and efficient will be crucial for the future of this technology. Today's guest is right at the center of making that happen.
We're sitting down with Ajay Kochhar, who is President, CEO, and Co-Founder of Li-Cycle, a leading global lithium-ion battery resource recovery company that trades under the symbol LICY. Before founding Li-Cycle in 2016, Ajay gained extensive technology and project development experience through progressive roles with Hatch's industrial clean tech and advisory practices.
While working in that space, he garnered in-depth engineering and project management experience through clean technology development in the lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, gold, lead, zinc, molybdenum, and rare earth metals industries. His technical expertise spans the entire project life cycle from conceptual and pre-feasibility studies to construction and commissioning.
Highlights:
- Ajay describes the use and benefits of lithium-ion batteries (3:50)
- What makes lithium-ion battery recycling unique (4:19)
- Ajay's career history and how he spotted a gap in the market (6:42)
- Ajay describes Li-Cycle's IP portfolio (8:31)
- What it means for companies to be 'environmentally friendly' (9:46)
- The benefits of domestic production and infrastructure (11:36)
- Economics and dual-revenue business model at Li-Cycle (12:49)
- Ajay discusses competition in the industry (15:50)
- Ajay's thoughts on the electric-vehicle adoption (18:05)
- Current and short-term priorities for Li-Cycle (20:00)
- Relationship with China in the lithium-ion industry (21:51)
- How the Inflation Reduction Act impacts businesses like Li-Cycle (23:00)
- Ajay's opinion on what investors miss when measuring company value (24:01)
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If you have questions about the show, or have a topic in mind you'd like discussed in future episodes, email our producer, marion@lowerstreet.co.