Vehicle Scrapping Strategy: Finding Value in the Waste Stream

Akshayveer took on this engagement at PwC when a client needed a full business diversification strategy for the vehicle scrapping and tire recycling sector, a space that had just been opened up by a new government policy. The sector was new territory for both the client and the team.

His initial hypothesis going in was straightforward: the value in the sector sat in the recycling process itself, with secondary car dealerships and recyclers as the key nodes to understand. He began by mapping the value chain, expecting the numbers to confirm that read.

What the value chain analysis revealed was different. The real opportunity was not in recycling but in what happened to the waste streams after. Aggregates left over from the process, including rubber crumbs and plastic residues, had multiple downstream use cases that the initial framing had missed entirely. Rubber crumbs, for instance, could be converted into pyrolysis oil with meaningful calorific value, or processed into secondary recycled products.

Akshayveer revised the strategic direction based on this finding. The engagement covered sector diagnostics, market assessment, competitive benchmarking, and policy and regulatory analysis, with the downstream waste stream opportunity anchoring the final roadmap delivered to the client.