The country’s largest producer of zinc, lead, and silver has already approved a 250,000 tonne integrated zinc smelter, a tailings reprocessing plant, and an exploration programme. These three projects will collectively cost nearly ₹17,000 crore.
For this fiscal year, Hindustan Zinc has guided for a capex of $500-600 million (₹ 4,763-5,715 crore) for growth projects, and around $400-450 million as maintenance capex, taking its total spend for the year to more than $1 billion, according to the company’s FY26 annual report. It had generated a free cash flow of ₹13,337 crore last fiscal.
Over the next five years, Hindustan Zinc plans to enhance refined metal capacity to 2 million tonne from 1.1 million tonne currently, while raising the capacity for silver refining to 1,500 tonnes from 800 tonnes currently. Its exploration programme will target expanding reserves to over 50 million tonne from 13 million tonne currently, which is expected to support a mine life of over 25 years, the company said.