Mining It Right

WITH AN EYE ON DIVERSIFIED AND SUSTAINABLE OFFERINGS, ARUN MISRA IS RESHAPING HZL.

- BY JOE C. MATHEW

ON A CHILLY winter morning in February 2019, Arun Misra, an avid jogger who had just completed a two-hour run crisscrossing Udaipur, found the city of Rajasthan—famous for its lakes and home to what is today the world's largest integrated zinc producer, Hindustan Zinc Ltd (HZL)—to be a ‘nice place’.

Misra, a top executive in the raw materials division of Tata Steel at that time, was on his first visit to Udaipur to attend a one-day conference on minerals. Little did he know then that a few months later, in November the same year, he would shift to Udaipur to head HZL.

“I never thought I will come here, but when the Vedanta (the company that owns a majority stake in HZL) folks called me to lead HZL as CEO, I felt the firm had the pedigree [for me] to invest my time and professional skills,” says Misra. The switch was almost seamless—both Tata Steel and HZL dealt with critical minerals; both had a pre- and post-liberalisation phase (a pre-Ratan Tata and Ratan Tata phase for Tata Steel, and a PSU and post-Vendanta-acquisition phase for HZL), and both had systems and processes, established over decades, already in place.

However, it wasn’t going to be a cakewalk. A global pandemic was waiting in the wings. Operations were about to get shut down, environment and safety concerns were to become paramount during lockdowns, and the future of supply chains and businesses in general, and the mining industry—considered to be ‘hazardous’ in nature—in particular, was uncertain. Besides, Misra had his own grand plans: he wanted HZL to produce more, create additional value for shareholders, and become a hallmark in responsible mining.