One Purpose, Many Ways
CEO's Message


Dear Stakeholder,

I take great pride in presenting the first online consolidated Sustainability Report of Sterlite Industries. As India's largest non-ferrous metals and mining group comprising of companies like Hindustan Zinc Ltd. (HZL), Copper Mines of Tasmania (CMT), Bharat Aluminium Company Ltd. (BALCO), Sterlite Copper, Zinc International (Africa and Ireland) and Sterlite Energy Limited, we constantly strive towards one purpose – unfailing commitment towards economic, social and environmental development.

The India growth story is reflected in the success of Sterlite Industries, which is widening its global presence and is -now considered to be amongst the leading metals and mining companies in the world. This success story, however, is not just about economic growth, but our commitment to sustainability. Sustainable development is the founding pillar of our vision and mission. Our priorities include good governance, environmental footprint reduction and creating value for all our stakeholders.


The Growth Story With our key organic expansion projects, we foresee a significant growth in our production capacities, in the subsequent financial year. We expect a further growth in metal consumption with tight supply in specific markets, particularly for copper and zinc. Whilst higher commodity prices are driving up input costs in our industry, our structurally low-cost assets combined with our continuous improvement methodologies, are enabling us to mitigate the effects of this phenomenon.

As a part of this growth strategy, we completed the acquisition of the zinc assets of Anglo-American in the second half of 2010-11, increasing our zinc-lead capacity to 1.5 million tonnes per annum. This acquisition makes us the largest integrated zinc-lead producer in the world and extends our zinc footprint in Africa and Ireland.


Sustainable DevelopmentSustainability is a bed rock of our philosophy of doing the business. To achieve goal of sustainability we have chosen International Finance Corporation (IFC) framework and performance standards at Vedanta Resource Plc (parent company) level. As an element of framework implementation, we have developed policies, technical and management standards to address key sustainability issues related to our nature of work and prepare a road map for our journey. We are progressing well in implementing the framework, whilst retaining our focus on improving our safety performance; contributing further to local communities; continuing to manage and minimize our impact on air, water and land; and maintaining a dialogue with stakeholders on an ongoing basis.

We recognize that climate change is one of the key challenges affecting the world today, and therefore strive hard to mitigate environmental impact of our operations. Reiterating our commitment towards adopting renewable energy and energy efficient initiatives, we have commissioned Wind Power Plants and are rigorously moving forward in identifying CDM projects and their implementations. In 2011, Hindustan Zinc commissioned 48 MW of 150 MW expansions in wind power generation capacity during the fourth quarter, and the remaining 102 MW is expected to be commissioned in the year 2011-12.

CSR is an integral part of our business which is accorded as much importance as any of our business project. We are committed to raise the quality of life and social well-being of communities where we operate and beyond through our relentless CSR initiatives. We are passionately committed to improve the quality of life of the communities by providing accessibility to the basic facilities of health & nutrition, education, sustainable livelihood, water & sanitation, infrastructure etc. In addition to this, we have also developed specialized programmes for socio-economic empowerment of women and bio-investment. Through our CSR interventions, we are positively impacting lives of more than 1.4 million people across our areas of operation the country. We are providing supplementary nutrition & pre-school education to more than 65,000 children of 3-6 years of age through Vedanta Bal-shakti Anganwadi Centres in Rajasthan & Chattisgarh. In addition, nutritious food is being provided on daily basis to more than 2.2 lac children of through Mid-day Meal Programme

Over a period of time, we have created community assets through our group companies such as Vedanta Cancer Hospital at Raipur and Hindustan Zinc- Vedanta Cardiac Centre at Udaipur to provide affordable medical services to the respective local communities. At Korba (Chattisgarh), the Vedanta Rehabilitation Centre has also been established providing physio-speech and behavioural therapy to mentally & physically challenges children. Livelihood enhancement projects at Tuticorin have improved socio-economic strata by enhancing employability of coastal youth to 78% with monthly income of Rs. 3000-4000. Along with this, various need based community programmes are running for providing sustainable livelihood opportunities to rural people in both farm & non-farm sector

Our success and journey towards sustainability wouldn’t be possible without the encouragement and participation of our stakeholders – our employees, community, our supplier partners and many more. I express our gratitude to our stakeholders and hope that they continue to encourage and support us in our sustainability journey.

In this report, we have followed the Guidelines from GRI G3.1 framework and also adopted United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) principles to report all our activities and initiatives relevant to our stakeholders and our business. I urge our stakeholders to read this report and give an honest feedback as it will help us in understanding their perspectives and further improve upon.


Yours Sincerely,

M. S. Mehta
CEO – Sterlite Industries