With more than 50 years of operational experience, Hindustan Zinc is India’s largest and world’s second largest zinc-lead miner. The company has a reserve base of 150.3 million MT and an average zinc-lead grade of 7.8% and mineral resources of 297.6 million MT. Hindustan Zinc’s fully integrated zinc operations currently hold 78% market share in India’s primary zinc industry, and are the sixth largest silver producers globally with an annual capacity of 800 MT.

On the future trend of underground mining in India, Hindustan Zinc’s CEO, Arun Misra, said, “Technology is the catalyst in making mining operations ‘smart’, ‘sustainable” and ‘safe’ by leveraging digital tools and processes that make operations instrumented, interconnected, and intelligent. Some of the emerging technology trends that we are fast integrating into our mines are in the areas of automation and remote operation, real-time data capture, digital twins, drones, mine to mill process integration, hydraulic ore hoisting, and safety innovation.”

The automation and remote operation help use the mine’s wireless network and allows the operator to utilise the machine functions from a remote location including, drilling levelling, tramming, and GPS hole navigation to increase productivity, safety, and cost-efficiency of the process.