- Vedanta Limited is a natural resources company that digs metals and minerals out of the ground, turns them into finished materials, and sells them to industries building everything from cars and buildings to power grids and electronics - it is India’s largest diversified player in this space. It was incorporated on September 8, 1975 and grew by acquiring and scaling a string of large, often state-originated assets - aluminium smelters, zinc mines, oil fields, steel plants - into an integrated chain that now spans mining, smelting, refining, and power generation across India, Africa, and the Middle East. The recurring approach is to own the full value chain from captive raw materials through to value-added products, supply its own power, and then use the cash from mature operations to build the next one - a pattern now being applied to critical minerals and technology materials under a strategic overhaul the company calls “Vedanta 2.0”.
Business segments
Five engines at different stages - a hydrocarbon cash cow, two consumer platforms at national scale, and a green-energy bet under construction - each built with the cash flows of the one before.
1. Aluminium: India’s largest integrated producer, from bauxite to finished metal
It runs the biggest single-location aluminium smelter outside China, feeds it from its own mines and refinery, and powers it with its own coal plants - keeping costs in the cheapest quartile globally.
- Captive raw materials, most of the way - it operates its own bauxite mines and the Lanjigarh alumina refinery in Odisha, which is expanding to 5 MTPA capacity and hit an exit run rate of 4 MTPA in FY26, moving toward 100% backward integration. The Sijimali bauxite block alone holds an estimated 310 million tonnes of reserves.
- Self-supplied energy keeps costs down - 4.6 GW of captive power and captive coal mines, including Jamkhani at 2.6 MTPA, feed the smelters, with more mines under development so that eventually all coal comes from within 100 km of the plants. That helped push the Aluminium COP to US$1,752 per tonne in FY26, the lowest in five years and firmly in the first quartile of the global cost curve.
- Two smelters, one giant - the Jharsuguda complex in Odisha has 1.85 MTPA of capacity, the largest single-location aluminium smelter outside China, while the BALCO smelter in Chhattisgarh (51% owned, with the Indian government holding the rest) adds another 0.6 MTPA, giving the group 2.4 MTPA total - the most in India and fourth-largest globally excluding China.
- Shifting from commodity to specialty - value-added products like billets, wire rods, and rolled products made up 60% of aluminium sales in FY26, with a target of roughly 90% by FY27, and the business launched India’s first low-carbon aluminium brands, Restora and Restora Ultra, selling a record 91 kt of low-carbon metal in FY26.
2. Zinc-Lead-Silver: the world’s largest integrated zinc miner, with silver as the bonus
It runs the biggest underground zinc-lead mine on the planet, produces three-quarters of India’s zinc, and is the country’s only primary silver producer - silver alone contributed nearly half the segment’s profit.
- The Rampura Agucha anchor - Hindustan Zinc (60.71% owned) operates the world’s largest underground zinc-lead mine in Rajasthan, with total smelter capacity of 1.14 MTPA and captive mines capable of 17 MTPA, giving it a 74% domestic zinc market share.
- Cost leadership in zinc mining - the cost of production excluding royalty fell to US$959 per tonne in FY26, the lowest in five years, placing HZL in the first decile of the global zinc mining cost curve. Ore reserves and resources hit a record 468.6 million tonnes, supporting a mine life of more than 25 years.
- Silver is the profit engine - as India’s only primary silver producer, HZL churned out 627 tonnes of silver in FY26, and silver contributed 45% of the zinc business’s overall profitability, all of it sold domestically to industrial users, jewellers, and silverware makers.
- International mines are scaling up - the Zinc International arm, held through a wholly-owned subsidiary, runs the Gamsberg mine in South Africa and Black Mountain in Namibia; Gamsberg alone produced 185 kt of metal in concentrate in FY26, a 39% jump, and a Phase 2 expansion is 93.6% complete to nearly double ore throughput to 8.4 MTPA.
- Low-carbon zinc and a downstream hub - HZL launched Asia’s first low-carbon zinc brand, EcoZen, with a carbon footprint below 1 tonne of CO₂ per tonne of zinc - about 75% lower than the global average - and is building India’s first integrated zinc downstream park in Rajasthan to anchor local manufacturers.
3. Oil & Gas: India’s largest private crude producer, feeding domestic refineries
It pumps roughly a quarter of India’s domestically produced crude oil from Rajasthan’s desert fields and sells every barrel inside the country under government-regulated terms.
- The Rajasthan block is the workhorse - the RJ Block, held through a 50% group share in Cairn India Holdings, contains the Mangala, Bhagyam, and Aishwariya fields and sits on gross reserves and resources of 1,321 million barrels of oil equivalent. Average gross operated production was 87.2 thousand barrels of oil equivalent per day in FY26.
- A 670-km heated pipeline to the coast - crude travels from Barmer in Rajasthan to the Gujarat coast through the world’s longest continuously heated pipeline, roughly 670 km, connecting desert oil to refineries.
- Wringing more from old fields - an ASP (Alkaline-Surfactant-Polymer) injection facility has been built at Mangala, one of the largest polymer-based enhanced oil recovery projects on a single field anywhere, with injection set to begin in Q1 FY27 to push out oil that conventional methods leave behind.
- New offshore production in the works - Cairn installed India’s first subsea template at the Ambe block on the West Coast in December 2025, the first Discovered Small Field block to be monetised, adding roughly 13 million barrels of oil equivalent in reserves and resources with production targeted by FY27.
4. Iron & Steel: merchant miner, pig iron exporter, and a growing integrated steel mill
It digs iron ore from three Indian states, sells it to steelmakers, and also runs its own blast furnaces to make pig iron and long steel products - with a Liberian ore reserve that could last over 50 years.
- Three-state mining footprint - the Sesa Iron Ore division operates mines in Karnataka (60 million tonnes of reserves), Goa (57 million tonnes), and Odisha (82.8 million tonnes), producing 6.5 million dry metric tonnes of saleable ore in FY26, up 67% year-on-year.
- Pig iron from captive furnaces - three blast furnaces with 1.2 MTPA of capacity turn ore into pig iron, with record production of 895 kt in FY26, including a custom high-purity grade developed for niche customers.
- Integrated steel at Bokaro - ESL Steel (95.5% owned) runs a 1.6 MTPA hot metal plant in Jharkhand making billets, TMT bars, wire rods, and ductile iron pipes, with saleable production of 1,301 kt in FY26 and an expansion to 3.5 MTPA underway.
- A 50-year option in West Africa - the business holds one of the world’s largest iron ore resource bases in Liberia, with a reserve life estimated at over 50 years, and a first-phase plan targeting 3 MTPA of production including a concentrator plant, power plant, and dedicated port infrastructure.
5. Copper: a custom smelter and refiner with a shuttered giant and a Saudi growth bet
It runs a refinery in Silvassa that turns imported copper anodes into cathodes and rods for the Indian market, while its much larger Tuticorin smelter remains offline and a new rod mill is being built in Saudi Arabia.
- Refining other people’s copper - the Silvassa refinery has 216 KTPA of capacity and produced a record 170 kt of cathodes in FY26, sourcing most of its anode feed under long-term contracts with smelters and traders, earning its margin from refining charges, by-product sales, and domestic premiums rather than from owning mines.
- A 20% domestic market share from one plant - even with the 400 KTPA Tuticorin smelter shut since April 2018, the copper business holds a strong fifth of the Indian market, supplying wire and cable makers, transformer manufacturers, and electrical profile producers.
- Saudi rod mill for regional demand - a 125 KTPA continuous cast copper rod plant is being built at Ras-Al-Khair in Saudi Arabia through a wholly-owned subsidiary, positioning the business to serve Middle Eastern cable manufacturers.
- Downstream bolt-on - Vedanta acquired Incab Industries, a power cable and industrial wire manufacturer, under India’s insolvency code in December 2025, giving the copper business a direct route to sell its metal into finished cable products.
Group structure and partners
A just-completed demerger has split the conglomerate into five separately listed companies, each housing a distinct natural-resource engine, while the retained Vedanta Limited entity holds the crown-jewel Hindustan Zinc stake and acts as an incubator for new ventures.
- The May 2026 demerger - effective 1 May 2026, Vedanta Limited was split into five listed entities: Vedanta Aluminium, Vedanta Power, Vedanta Iron & Steel, Vedanta Oil & Gas, and the retained Vedanta Limited, which keeps the 60.71% stake in Hindustan Zinc and houses the copper, ferro alloys, and new technology businesses.
- Key listed and unlisted holdings - beyond Hindustan Zinc, the group holds 51% in BALCO (aluminium, with the Indian government at 49%), 95.5% in ESL Steel, 100% in Ferro Alloys Corporation (FACOR), 100% in the Zinc International mines, and 100% in Cairn India Holdings, which carries the 50% group share in the Rajasthan oil block and a 98.2% stake in AvanStrate, a Japanese-Taiwanese-Korean display glass manufacturer with over 700 patents.
- Incubation of new materials - the retained Vedanta Limited entity now serves as the platform for critical minerals (10 blocks won across nickel, cobalt, graphite, and other minerals), the Nicomet nickel sulphate business (India’s sole nickel producer, with roughly half the domestic market), and the semiconductor and display glass ventures.