Hindustan Zinc mulls selling wind energy assets: Report

Vendata Group company Hindustan Zinc Ltd. (HZL) intends to sell its wind energy assets spread across five Indian states, VCCircle reported on Friday. Shares of the former public sector company rose 1.75 percent to close at Rs. 226.70 apiece on the Bombay Stock Exchange.

The company's wind energy assets with capacity of 273.5 MW are located in Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu. The website quoted a source to say that HZL has given the mandate to IDFC to look for buyers. 

HZL claims to operate the world's largest zinc mine in Rampura Agucha, Rajasthan with an ore production capacity of 6.15 million MT per annum. " Reserve and resource of Rampura Agucha Mine as on 31 March, 2015 are 103 million MT," according to the company.

Besides, it also claims to have the largest zinc-lead smelting complexes in the world, at Chanderiya in Udaipur, Rajasthan.

In 2014-15, Chanderiya produced 4.64 lakh MT of zinc and 40,763 MT of lead.

The items mined at the location are special high grade (SHG) zinc, continuous galvanising grade (CGG) zinc, prime western (PW) zinc and pure lead. It also produces a number of valuable by-products including silver, according to HZL.

Apart from mines, the company also has thermal captive power plants with power generation capacity of 474 MW, 35.6 MW of diesel generation capacity and 35.4 MW of power generation capacity from waste heat recovered from roasters.

The company's net profit dropped 47 percent to Rs. 1,037 crore while sales declined 30 percent to Rs. 2,501 crore.

"The decrease was on account of lower volumes, primarily zinc, and lower LME partly offset by higher rupee depreciation and higher silver price. On a sequential basis, revenue decreased by 19 percent due to lower volumes, partly offset by higher zinc & silver prices," the company had said in a statement.