The car battery acceptance business works according to a simple scheme: "I bought used devices - repaired or resold - made a profit." To do this, we register a company, obtain a license to work with hazardous waste, look for premises and equipment, and form distribution channels. The result - profit within six months and profitability of 20%.

“I will buy old batteries” - behind this seemingly banal ad is a profitable business with a profit margin of more than 20%.

The battery acceptance business is not only a profitable business option, but also a direction for protecting the environment from human waste.

Technically, a car battery can last from 1 to 5 years, after which it needs to be replaced or repaired. Spent batteries can be disassembled for spare parts or restored to working condition. Both in the first and in the second case, it will be possible to sell them 2-5 times more expensive than the purchase price.

Reference: In the developed countries of the world, the acceptance and disposal of car batteries is supported by the state due to the high toxicity of lead and sulfuric acid contained in them. For example, in Norway, firms engaged in such activities are exempted from paying environmental fees.

Business model

The battery recycling firm is a way to generate income from recycling.

Why is such an idea seen as a profitable recycled business?

• Firstly, batteries fail every 1-5 years and, most often, are sent to a landfill by car owners due to the impossibility of further operation;
• Secondly, old car chargers include a lot of valuable substances (lead, silver, helium, acids, etc.) that can be reused;
• Thirdly, if you master the skills of repair, then they can be sold after restoration at a reduced cost (the demand will be high, since not all car owners can afford a new device).
• And finally, buying up batteries is a business option that does not require an impressive start-up capital.

Reference: In 2016, the number of cars on the roads of Russia amounted to 56.6 million units. Assuming that batteries are changed every three years on average, up to 19 million such devices end up in landfills every year.
Source: traffic police

Service description - where to start?

Acceptance of failed car batteries can be the basis for building two business options with the possibility of combining them.

Reference: Disassembly of the device in order to extract valuable substances (lead, hydrochloric or sulfuric acid, etc.) and parts is carried out only on expensive equipment, which requires a starting investment of 1 million rubles.

Buying batteries - what to look for?

At the stage of buying failed car batteries, you can use two proven methods:

1. Organize a collection point for used batteries in a place where potential customers can pass (inside a garage cooperative, near service stations, etc.);
2. Carry out field raids by car in garages, service stations, parking lots in order to purchase old devices.

Non-working mechanisms assembled in such ways can have one of five breakdown options, each of which implies a certain order of subsequent actions.

Premises and equipment - what you need to know?

You should start buying car batteries by preparing the premises. Here it is important to consider three nuances:

• The building must have the status of a non-residential object (it is most convenient to use a garage for this purpose);
• Ensuring it is protected from unauthorized entry by unauthorized persons, as well as provided with electricity and water;
• When it comes to repairs, it is necessary to purchase equipment, storage tanks for hazardous waste, and overalls.

The Sanitary and Epidemiological Service (SES) issues a permit for activity based on the results of the inspection of the premises.

To carry out events for the purchase of batteries “from hand”, you also need your own car with a trunk (transporting used devices in the passenger compartment is harmful to health).

Setting up a business - what documents are required?

For the business of accepting car batteries, a license from Rosprirodnadzor is required (Federal Law “On Licensing Certain Types of Activities” dated May 4, 2011 N 99-FZ). To obtain it, it is necessary to register an individual entrepreneur or LLC with the tax authorities.

After the company is registered (its owners have received an extract from the ERGUL or EGRIP), you can begin to obtain a license for the collection, transportation, storage and processing of hazardous and hazardous waste (Federal Law “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation and Recognition as Lost the force of certain provisions of the legislative acts of the Russian Federation "of June 29, 2015 N 203-FZ). This will require:

• Constituent and registration documents of the company;
• Papers for immovable objects and land;
• Agreements for the provision of water and energy supply;
• Documents confirming the professional training of employees in working with hazardous substances (for companies that repair and dismantle batteries);
• Conclusion from the SES regarding permissible emissions into water, land, air;
• Detailed plan of the territory within which waste of I-IV classes will be processed, stored, placed;
• List of waste that the company handles.

Reference: The battery contains substances that can be assigned to different classes according to the degree of their harmful effects on the environment (acids - class I, lead, alkalis - class II, helium compounds - class III, sulfates - class IV, plastic - class V). ).

If you suddenly decide to implement a battery recycling business idea, then, frankly, this is a bad idea. Of course, a battery is a product that does not decompose in the environment, and if you throw it in the trash, then you will harm the environment. It makes sense for it to be recycled. But there are reasons why no one does it.

Why does the business idea of ​​recycling batteries not bode well?

If you try to take used batteries to a collection point, then you will have problems. You simply cannot find such items, because there are practically none. This is justified by the fact that battery recycling is an expensive activity that does not promise profits. It just so happens that making batteries from scratch is much cheaper than recycling already finished and used ones. Perhaps in the future they will come up with technologies that will quickly and cheaply use spent batteries to produce new ones, but at the moment such technologies do not exist. Well-known manufacturers of these products speak about this. Therefore, you should switch to others that offer much greater prospects and break even. You can find more information about this business idea in the following video material:

Chelyabinsk businessman Vladimir Matsyuk was one of the first in Russia to start recycling batteries, which are assembled for him by Media Markt and IKEA. Business is still scanty, but very promising

Chelyabinsk entrepreneur Vladimir Matsyuk (Photo: Ekaterina Kuzmina / RBC)

Waste industry

Growing up in Soviet Kazakhstan, Matsyuk knew from personal experience how to take care of resources. “There were often supply problems,” the entrepreneur recalls in an interview with RBC. - Therefore, from the skins of eaten oranges, my mother made candied fruits, and from the seeds of sea buckthorn, if they were insisted on sunflower oil, a disinfecting oil was obtained. For me, it was the natural course of things.”

In the late 1990s, Matsyuk graduated from the Faculty of Economics of the South Ural State University (Chelyabinsk) and began to combine teaching and work in commercial structures. In 2004, he decided to take his students' summer internships seriously for an organization theory course, proposing that they create a real firm. The students themselves came up with the name of the company - "Megapolisresurs", and then began to decide what it would do. Matsyuk already had experience in solving "environmental" issues for Chelyabinsk firms, so it was decided to focus on an understandable topic (waste paper recycling). But the practice quickly ended, and Matsyuk felt a taste for business. “I decided to let there be waste, but with precious metal, we need to pull out valuable contents from them and lower the hazard class,” he recalls.

Matsyuk decided to start collecting fixer - a solution that is used to fix images on film or paper. Depending on the type of shooting (black and white, color, x-ray) when fixing up to 70% of the silver contained in photographic paper (from 5 to 40 g per 1 sq. m ), goes into solution, from which silver can be easily extracted. “The main thing was to correctly determine the purchase price of the spent solution, so that it would make sense for laboratories to store it and sell it to us,” recalls Matsyuk . According to the entrepreneur, a liter of fixer is purchased at a price of 40 to 70 rubles: “Up to 4 G silver." At current prices for silver (about 27 rubles per gram) per liter of fixer " Megapolis resource "can earn about 110 rubles. To start this business (mainly for the purchase of equipment) Matsyuk spent $ 20 thousand. In the profit came out after eight months. Profit was 25-30% of revenue. Silver obtained in the form of granules " Megapolis resource » sells to jewelers (clients include Veliky Ustyug plant "Northern black").

Photo: Ekaterina Kuzmina / RBC

In 2008, the silver extraction business was added to the extraction of silver from photographic solutions. “At first they thought that silver could be washed off the films with the help of harsh chemicals, but these are people, manual labor, a high degree of danger, and you want to sleep peacefully,” Matsyuk recalls. - We found a biological solution - special bacteria turn the film into gelatin, from which silver is then extracted. The whole procedure, in terms of danger, is close to cheese production.”

In 2009, Megapolisresurs started recycling microcircuits and electronics (medical and office equipment), which, in addition to silver, contain gold and other rare metals. Requirements for the processing of various equipment were introduced in 2002 by the federal law "On Environmental Protection", and for their violation, companies were threatened with a fine of 100 thousand to 250 thousand rubles. or suspension of activities for up to six months. “The first clients were consulates and foreign companies: they were terribly afraid of our laws, according to which we can’t just throw away computers,” recalls Matsyuk. Now Megapolisresurs actively serves government agencies on this topic - in the last two years alone, according to the public procurement website, Matsyuk's company has won more than 40 tenders for the disposal of various equipment for a total of about 2.5 million rubles.

Batteries are also waste.

The idea to recycle batteries was thrown to Matsyuk “from the audience”. In 2013, when the entrepreneur was speaking at a conference, he was asked why he recycles circuit boards but does not recycle batteries. “I replied that we can also use batteries, but no one collects enough of them,” says Matsyuk. After the conference, one of the public organizations of St. Petersburg came out and collected 2 tons of used batteries. For Megapolisresurs, this was the first experience of working with batteries.

How batteries are recycled

For the processing of batteries, Megapolisresurs uses a production line where microcircuits are disposed of. First of all, the batteries are crushed and the iron elements are separated with a special magnetic tape. Manganese and zinc (in the form of salts), as well as graphite, are extracted from the resulting polymetallic mixture in several stages of leaching. In total, four removable cells account for 80% of the weight of the batteries. The production lines of Megapolisresurs allow processing up to 2 tons of batteries per day. Battery recycling takes about four days.

In 2013, the battery collection project decided to launch the Media Markt chain, which chose Megapolisresurs as a recycling partner (the companies had already collaborated on photo solutions). For the trading network, this is a social project (more than half of the batteries sold are recycled in Germany). At the start of the project, it turned out that the batteries were not included in the Russian waste classifier, and Media Markt and Megapolisresurs spent almost six months to correct this defect and other organizational measures. “The total weight of batteries sent for recycling in 2014 was about 18 tons,” a representative of Media Markt told RBC. “This is more than double what we planned when the project was launched (7 tons).” IKEA (three points in Moscow, about 6.5 tons collected), the VkusVill chain of stores (56 points in Moscow, 1.4 tons), as well as retail chains in several regions (several dozen points) also give their batteries to Matsyuk. .

Garbage resource

565 million batteries was sold in Russia in 2013

30 tons of batteries redesigned Megapolisresurs in 2014

2 tons of batteries per hour can process "Megapolisresurs"

70 rub. — the cost of recycling 1 kg of batteries

1.5 million rubles the company gained from the recycling of batteries in 2014

100 million rubles — total revenue of Megapolisresurs

Sources: company data, Greenpeace Russia, RBC calculations

For "Megapolisresource" » Battery recycling is a small but promising business. Unlike fixer, films and computers for batteries Matsyuk not only does not pay, but also receives money - from the companies that collect them. “For the recycling of 1 kg of batteries, we pay 70 rubles,” the director of public relations told RBC. Vkusvill Evgeny Shchepin . “At the same time, we ourselves have to deliver the batteries to the warehouse.” Megapolisresource " in Moscow. They do not provide transportation services yet. Manager environmental project Media Markt Alena Yuzefovich in November 2014 told online edition of Recycle that the "initial price tag" Megapolisresource "for the transportation and processing of a kilogram of batteries - about 110 rubles." The company does not make money on partners, but takes from them only the cost of delivery and recycling of batteries: “70 rubles. is the average cost of recycling 1 kg of batteries,” says Matsyuk . According to him, the income from recycling batteries in 2014 amounted to 1.5 million rubles.

Most of this amount was contributed by battery collectors, so far Matsyuk is not very good at trading in recycling products. From 1 ton of batteries, you can get 288 kg of manganese, 240 kg of zinc, about 47 kg of graphite. “The content of manganese (28.8%) and zinc (24%) in batteries is higher than in the richest ores (up to 26%),” Matsyuk notes. “If we look at batteries as raw materials, and not as waste, we will see a unique deposit in which there is a lot of valuable raw materials.” But this is theoretical. And in practice, it turns out to sell only iron from batteries: it goes to the Mechel plant in Chelyabinsk. It is still difficult with sales of non-ferrous metal salts: “The volumes are small and of little interest to wholesale buyers, and retail sales are too laborious for laboratories.”

According to RBC calculations, if Megapolisresurs sold chemically pure metal, then 1.4 tons of graphite, 8.6 tons of manganese and 7.2 tons of zinc extracted from 30 tons of batteries could bring the company about $ 50 thousand (about 1.9 million rubles at the average exchange rate of the ruble in 2014; based on market prices for metals). But to get manganese and zinc in the form of a metal, additional investments of $1.5 million are needed, says Matsyuk.

The crisis has failed

The main sources of income for Megapolisresurs are still the processing of office equipment and photo waste. In 2014, these areas, according to the entrepreneur, brought the company in the amount of 100 million rubles. (approximately equal). In 2013, according to Kontur.Focus, the company's revenue amounted to 49 million rubles, and net profit - 7.7 million rubles.

Matsyuk expects recycling volumes to increase. “In December 2014, amendments to the law “On production and consumption waste” were adopted, which oblige the manufacturer to pay either a recycling fee for their products, or to undertake obligations for its partial return collection,” says Matsyuk. “But while there are no relevant by-laws, it is not clear how this will all work.”

In the case of batteries, if at least 10% of what is sold is recycled (in 2014, according to Matsyuk, 8 thousand tons were sold), this will allow Megapolisresurs to earn over 100 million rubles annually.

In 2015, Matsyuk plans to earn 220 million rubles. for the disposal of office equipment and about 100 million rubles. - on the extraction of silver from films and solutions. How realistic are these plans? Last year, Megapolisresurs ended with a loss (Matsyuk did not disclose its size) due to a 20% fall in silver prices in the second half of the year (from $20 to $16 per troy ounce). As a result, the Megapolisresurs and Fractal companies (also owned by Matsyuk) did not fulfill the contracts concluded earlier both for the processing of scrap containing precious metals (for example, with the Research Institute of Semiconductor Devices - for 3.8 million rubles), and for the supply of silver (to the plant "Northern Chern" - by 427 thousand rubles, to the company "Yuvelirdragmetal" - by 3.6 million rubles). This, as follows from the file of arbitration cases of the Pravo.ru system, forced the partners of the company to apply to the courts. “We took out loans and purchased equipment based on silver prices of $30-35 per troy ounce, and we were forced to sell the metal at prices almost half that,” Matsyuk notes. In January 2015, he registered a new company, Megapolisresurs, in Kurgan.

Moscow competitors

In Moscow, in addition to Megapolisresurs, several other companies accept batteries for recycling: Ecoprof LLC - 580 rubles each. for 1 kg, Megapolis-Group LLC - 100 rubles each. for 1 kg. Whether these companies have their own battery recycling facilities, their employees could not say by phone.

The most difficult part of this project will be the organization of the chain of waste collection - removal for recycling. Yes, this business is not high-margin, but the costs are not very significant, which is suitable for start-up entrepreneurs. And due to the high organizational complexity, it can become an excellent school for the organizer. Of course, this business remains low-cost only until the moment when you decide to organize not just a collection and sorting point, but also your own recycling workshop. In this case, your costs can amount to tens of millions of rubles, although profits are also significant.

“THE VOLUME OF THE RUSSIAN MARKET FOR UTILIZATION OF ENERGY-SAVING LAMPS AND BATTERIES IS ESTIMATED AT 1.2-1.5 BILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR”

So, you have decided to organize your collection and sorting point for the recycling of energy-saving light bulbs, batteries and consumer electronics (this can include computers and mobile phones, monitors and TVs, as well as microwave ovens and other kitchen appliances).

Please note that primary processing will also be carried out at your collection point - separation of garbage groups, separation of metals, rare earth elements, plastic and glass.

Let's make a reservation right away that expenses and incomes can be calculated very approximately, a lot depends on your organizational skills.

In addition to the head point, where both the reception and sorting of garbage will be carried out, you will also need to equip other points. For example, by agreement, hold joint promotions with shopping centers and government agencies, placing containers for collecting lamps or batteries on their territory. It is possible to equip an exit collection point that will collect such garbage on request. And to advertise it with the help of local ecologists in social networks.

Most importantly, you do not have to pay for such garbage. And you will be paid. For a conventional kilogram of batteries - about 2 thousand rubles, for a kilogram of metals from energy-saving lamps - about 1.5 thousand rubles. And a kilogram of gold or platinum from computer elements costs a whopping 320-450 thousand rubles, although you can hardly scrape up such a volume even in a month.

What is the price

Now let's look at the main costs. The creation of "LLC" will cost you about 15 thousand rubles. There will be no special costs for advertising, the coma of creating a business card site is about 15 thousand rubles more. A telephone connection with the number (8800) for your hotline will cost you 5 thousand rubles a month.

When choosing a place to rent your main warehouse and sorting shop, take a closer look at the industrial zones. There, for some 5-8 thousand rubles per square meter per year, you can rent a warm warehouse (a necessary condition). You will need at least 500 square meters, that is, you will have to pay about 2.3-4 million rubles per year for rent, taking into account the "communal". The advance payment will have to be made one month in advance. Approximately the same amount will be your monthly turnover. About 300-400 thousand rubles more you will have to spend on equipping the warehouse with additional equipment. Another 150 thousand rubles will cost you a used forklift.

It will cost you about 800 thousand rubles to buy a "gazelle" and re-equip it into a mobile point for collecting recyclable raw materials.

To work in a warehouse with an area of ​​​​500 square meters, 10 employees will be enough - sorters working 5 days a week, with a salary of 20-25 thousand rubles per month (in total, about 300 thousand rubles will need to be laid down, taking into account tax deductions). Also, 2-3 people with a similar salary will work in the acceptance group (on a Gazelle, and, if necessary, help load trucks with processed materials). You will also need a storekeeper-logistician who monitors the volume of materials in the warehouse - a salary of about 40 thousand rubles. Everything else can be outsourced - security, accounting, etc. Thus, outsourcing and the salary fund will eat up about 500 thousand rubles a month from you. Thus, the initial costs, based on three months in advance, will amount to about 4 million rubles.

Marginality

With a turnover of 2-3 million per month or more (which can be realistically achieved in 3-4 months), the margin will be about 20%, thus, the payback of initial costs will occur during the first year of operation