What happens to an electric vehicle battery when it dies? As rechargeable lithium-ion (li-ion) batteries continue to play an increasingly vital role in our society, there is an urgent need for a safe, sustainable and economically viable end-of-lifecycle pathway for these batteries. Since 2016, Ajay Kochhar has led the successful scale-up of Li-Cycle to address this urgent global challenge and opportunity. The company is now the largest commercial lithium-ion battery recycler in North America. Li-Cycle is now at another inflection point – on the verge of an international expansion.

Prior to Li-Cycle, Ajay gained deep technology and project development experience through progressive roles with Hatch’s Industrial Clean Tech and Advisory practices. While working in the Industrial Clean Tech practice, Ajay gained 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 lifecycle, from conceptual and pre-feasibility studies to construction and commissioning. Following his work in the industrial clean tech engineering field, Ajay worked as a Management Consultant with Hatch’s Advisory practice. In this role, he led teams to deliver financial and technical reviews of multi-billion-dollar investment opportunities, including technologies and assets across the li-ion battery value chain.

Ajay originally graduated from the University of Toronto in Chemical Engineering with honours. Ajay comes from entrepreneurial roots with family business experience gained from a young age.