Vedanta eyes 50% volume growth across all business in next 2-3 years

Vedanta Ltd plans to increase its volumes by 50% across all business operations over the next two-three years as a part of its capital expenditure (capex) plans.  Chairman Navin Agarwal said this during the annual general meeting (AGM) on Friday. This was the first AGM convened by Vedanta after its merger with Cairn India in April.

"We cannot give you an exact capex figure but in the next two-three years, you will see the company grow 50 per cent larger than what it is now in terms of its volumes across all businesses," said the Chairman.

According to the company CFO, the major capital investments will be in zinc, oil and gas and aluminium businesses. The management further added that Vedanta expects to continue rewarding its shareholders with support from a strong balance sheet and profitable businesses across all segments.

The company has brought down its gross debt by over INR 10,000 crore over a period of 15 months. Its EBITDA stood at INR 21,437 crore in FY17, up 41% YoY. The company's consolidated net debt stood at INR 71,569 crore as on March-end in 2017.

The company is currently looking for a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) to replace Tom Albanese, whose tenure ends in August.

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The company also said that despite their struggle for captive bauxite to feed its alumina refinery at Lanjigarh in Odisha, there was no significant value loss in terms of cost.

"Our aluminium production exit rate of 1.4 million tonne is a 40 per cent increase over the exit rate of the previous year. We are making a strong progress towards achieving our full production capacity of 2.3 million tonnes for aluminium," said Agarwal.

Currently, Vedanta is sourcing its bauxite from Chhattisgarh, besides importing a part from outside India.