Is India having its metals moment? | Fast Forward podcast season 2 episode 10 transcript

Full episode transcript

Andrea Hotter [AH]: Welcome to Fast Forward by Fastmarkets, the podcast that gets behind the headlines to explore the people, the ideas, and the forces shaping the future of commodities and critical minerals. I’m Andrea Hotter and I’m joined as always by my friend and colleague, William Adams. Will, it’s great to see you. 

William Adams [WA]: Yeah, absolutely. How are you, Andrea? 

AH: I’m good. November was a busy month. It’s really hard to believe. It’s almost the end of 2025. How have you been? You’ve been traveling, right? 

WA: Yes, I was in Saudi last week, so back there for the second time this year. Always a very interesting place. Lots happening there, I think. So always exciting to be there and to hear their plans and things. So it was good to get back. 

AH: Great. Well, that sounds like a really fun trip. Today, we are also going to be looking at another large country that is attracting a lot of attention at the moment, and has been for a while: India. It’s obviously very real in its ambition and domestic growth, but it’s still emerging on the global stage. So, to help break down the country’s prospects in metals and critical minerals, I spoke with Deshnee Naidoo, who’s the CEO of Vedanta Resources. Now, Deshnee has deep expertise in India’s mining and industrial landscape, so let’s hear what she had to say and whether she thinks India is really and truly having its metals moment. 

AH: Deshnee Naidoo, I am so happy to have you here today. Welcome to the Fast Forward Podcast. 

Deshnee Naidoo [DN]: Excellent. It is lovely to be here, Andrea. 

AH: And thank you for joining us so late as well. I know that you’re in India at the moment, so the time zones and everything aren’t fantastic with the US either. 

DN: Absolutely. But I have to say, Andrea, after being in the role for over 10 months, I think, you know, time zones and working between them has almost become a job skill right now. 

AH: All right. Well, look, before we dive into the podcast, I do wanna ask you a little bit about Vedanta. It’s a name I’ve known for a very long time. It is one of the most diversified producers in the world. You’ve got operations in India, in Africa, all over Africa, but it isn’t always top of mind in global metals conversations. So I wanted to ask you why you think the company flies a little bit under the radar, and what do you think the story is that the world needs to hear about Vedanta? 

DN: Vedanta is actually very well known in India because we are India’s largest natural resources company today, despite, Andrea, only being a 25-, 30-year, I would say, young company. And of course, I mean, India and the Indian subcontinent is home to a fourth of humanity, so yes, we might be maybe not as known in certain parts of the world, but in the parts of the world that matter, I think we are in fact known. 

So we operate, Andrea, predominantly out of India, which is where the home is. Almost 90% of our footprint is in India. The rest of it mostly in Africa, and a little bit now in the UAE as well. But if I look at what we’ve done in a very short period of time, we mine and produce metals today, as well as oil and gas. It’s almost 15 different commodities. And just to give everyone a little bit of sense of who Vedanta is, you know, today we produce over 1.1 million tons of zinc. 

We produce out of India two and a half million tons of aluminium metal and that too, we’re actually going downstream. We have significant positions in iron and steel, in energy, both renewable as well as thermal, which most of that is captive. So we are big, but I think it’s maybe deliberate in our part that we’ve stayed true to the geographies that actually matter to us, and geographies that we want to continue to deliver into like India. And that’s probably why I think that we are seen as perhaps not being too much out there. 

But maybe just some fast facts of the business. We were also the first Indian company to have listed in the London Stock Exchange in 2002. And by doing that, we raised some $35 billion, of which a lot of the project money went into the aluminium two-and-a-half million tons that I spoke about, a plant in KCM for our Zambia expansion. Our Hindustan Zinc business that I mentioned actually just became a member of ICMM. So I don’t think we are gonna be that company that’s perhaps not as spoken about after some of these more recent achievements. 

AH: Yeah. It sounds like the market may have been missing it, but maybe not for too much longer. Do you think there are any assets that you have that are underappreciated almost internationally, but now maybe is the time that we’re gonna start to hear more from them? Are there any specific ones? 

DN: Absolutely. So you know, Andrea, I am now in my second tenure at Vedanta. You probably remember me as the CEO of Vedanta Zinc International based out of South Africa from 2014, 2015 until 2020. And I was there building the Zinc International portfolio, and we took that asset from just a mere 80,000 tons of zinc metal in concentrate. And today, I’m happy to say that is over 300,000 tons of zinc metal in concentrate. And we’re busy executing the second phase of the Gamsberg project that I started. So next year, this time when I speak to you, South Africa will now be over 500,000 tons of zinc metal in the concentrate, one of the largest single sites for zinc globally. So that’s a site I think the world needs to start appreciating. 

And if you remember a little bit about that, Gamsberg deposit is still one of the largest deposits, and actually there’s still a lot of underground potential there too. So that’s exciting. And then, Andrea, the world’s talking about copper right now, nothing is more exciting than what I believe we have in Zambia. So through KCM, it has to be today one of the fastest-to-market opportunities out there because firstly, it has one of the highest grades. We are blessed with what we know today: over 16 million tons of metal and above two and a half to 3% copper grade, which is incredibly exciting. And we’ve already invested a lot of the shaft infrastructure, et cetera. So the work the team is doing right now is to look at how we can actually spend the capital to develop, to dewater, because it is one of the wetter mines, and to look at how we can bring that to full production, which is 300,000 tons of copper in the next three to four years. 

AH: I do want to ask you a little bit about how Vedanta fits into the broader India metals and industrial ecosystem, because obviously, you are a big company in India, but there are other Indian companies, so how does it fit in India? 

DN: Yeah, great question. So one of the reasons I came back is because of not only the Vedanta story, which is so exciting with the demerger looming, but also because of the India story. So you know, India today is the third largest economy, and I would call it a bright spot, only because I think it is the fastest growing in a major economy in the world. India has some bold ambitions. The country is talking about by 2047, when India would’ve reached her centenary year of independence, to be a $30 trillion economy. And that’s from $4 trillion today. So by that time, you know, India’s per capita income will raise almost sevenfold with more than 840 million people. So that’s over 50% of the population living in urban areas. 

Now, Andrea, we know the story, right? This is like a China story from more than a decade ago, and this will create massive demand for minerals and metals. And this is where the India story intersects with the Vedanta story. Because India is at the cusp of this industrial development, and Vedanta, of course, we have both the endowment in the ground. We’ve also recently acquired through the Indian auction systems about 11 critical minerals blocks as well. So we will stand here to support India and with her kind of mineral independence through some of the projects that we have. 

AH: Interesting. You mentioned that critical minerals aspect. At the moment, you’ve got a broad portfolio. You are broadening even further. How are you going to prioritize that capital allocation both across those commodities and regions? You have been pretty India-focused. Does that mean that’s going to continue to be the focus? How are you prioritizing the capital allocation? 

DN: So, I mean this is like the question on every mining and natural resources company’s CEO and board, right? So firstly, we have a very different approach to capital. I just want to start there because you know, having worked with the company before and I’ve come in now for over 10 months, the chairman, our founder, has very unique characteristics and this is what I believe makes us very resilient through different cycles, which you know, you and I know are still going to come over the next five to ten years. We believe in partnerships, so we will find partners to actually execute these projects. We also believe in the model of minimum packages because the chairman believes in a minimum amount of distractions; you get things done. And this model has worked for us. So Andrea, the first thing about capital discipline is do it well. 

The second thing is then making sure that you have a resilient project. We do have some of the lower-cost operations in some sectors like zinc and aluminium. We are quartile one on the industry cost curve. So that actually creates the robustness and the competitiveness in the project itself. But I want to talk about how that all translates in the numbers that we’ve been investing in. 

So in the last three years, we’ve been talking about a $10 billion capital pipeline. And as of March this year, we had executed around 60% of that. So our target expenditure every year is about one and a half billion dollars. 95% of that goes into India, 5% of that into Africa. And just to give you a sense on the commodities that we spend on, almost 40% of that goes into aluminium, about 30% in zinc, both out of India as well as the international business that I spoke about. Oil and gas gets about 20% of that and the rest of it, iron, steel, our ferro-manganese business, gets about 3% to 5% of that. This will now take our aluminium profile by FY28 – so our financial year-end is March – to about 3 million tons. And to do aluminium at 3 million tons, right? You need alumina. So our alumina production a year ago was 2 million tons. 

By the end of this financial year, we would’ve expanded that by two times one and a half million tons to a 5-million-ton refinery in Kalahandi to support, which is huge, Andrea. The chairman has already got us working on a de-bottlenecking exercise to take that to 6 million tons. It’s very exciting, right? Our Zinc India business will go from 1.1 million tons to 2 million tons, and that project was already approved and sanctioned by its board two months ago, and that will come by FY29. So I would actually say I entered in a very exciting phase where we are at the peak capital development of the company. 

AH: Okay. All right. Really interesting background on that. Now, I do want to put this in context. You talked about market cycles. You’ve talked a little bit about your long-term goals. I do want to talk about the supercycle because I think that’s really important. We are living through this structural shift in metals demand, whether it’s electrification and these new infrastructure cycles, or these defense rationales, the national security supply chain issues that we’re seeing. How do you actually view this next metal supercycle playing out? 

DN: So, you know, interesting, right? I mean, I can’t answer that question without thinking about the last supercycle, and I think we are both old enough to remember some of that. And the last metal supercycle was China-driven, investment-led, and very sector-driven. And then it was housing and infrastructure-orientated. I think what I can say now is that this cycle that we are in is structurally different, both in demand composition and as well as in geographical breadth. 

I think the next supercycle, which I believe has already started, is going to be much more broad-based, as well as sustainable. It’s going to be on the three broad sectors as you said. These are extraordinary times that we continue to live in. The next metals supercycle that we are in will be less shaped, I think, by one country’s urbanization, as we saw the last, and I think more about the world’s decarbonization, cleantech, digitalization, and defense imperatives, making it a multi-decade, multi-polar transformation, rather than I think a single boom-bust, which was the risk the last time around. It’s anyone’s game how this is going to go, but I’m excited because I continue to see opportunities. 

AH: If I had to ask you to pick from all of that, just one or two metals, a couple of them that you would say are your top picks at the moment, what would they be? 

DN: I think just knowing that we have a portfolio of 15 commodity exposures, but this has to be copper’s time. This has to be aluminium’s time. I think there’s something here so intrinsically linked to clean energy, clean technologies, and these are the metals of the future. So if you ask me to pick two, copper and aluminium, but I know the world’s going to need all of it. And India specifically is going to need all of this for the urbanization and industrialization goals that I just mentioned earlier. 

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AH: Do you see any red flags on the horizon? Any potential bottlenecks or any risks that could affect all of this? 

DN: I think world over, you know, as much as we are so bold, because we are talking growth, we are not talking quantities right now because we’re still growing a lot. I think transition to electric mobility or clean electricity is still at a very nascent stage. And what’s going to be required, as we’ve seen from countries like China, we are going to see a lot more government support. And I know government support is linked to a whole host of other factors that come in. So perhaps, Andrea, any shift in policies, as we’ve seen – I was there three years ago when it was all about the Inflation Reduction Act in the US – so I think that’s something to watch for, is what then happens on the policy-shaping side because it is going to take a lot of incentives by some of these global governments to actually support this kind of transition into electric mobility and clean energy. 

AH: Okay. I think this gives us a great foundation on Vedanta’s position. So let’s zoom out a tiny bit. We’ve been talking and touching on India there, but India itself, as you’ve mentioned, is going through this incredible transformation: the industrialization, electrification and now this critical minerals push. I’ve been around the block a bit and I’ve heard so many times that India was the next China in terms of its growth and its industrialization. So, is that the case now? Is it finally India’s moment? How do you see that playing out from a metals and materials perspective? 

DN: Yes, that’s one of the reasons I came back. It’s not just for the excitement that Vedanta has, but I definitely believe this is India’s time. But I think India is charting its own trajectory. You know, it’ll be China-like, I believe, in growth, ambition and global impact. But given the fact that India is currently the third-largest economy, India’s metal consumption is actually relatively low. 

And I was looking at some of these numbers when I started. You know, India’s per capita aluminium consumption is only 3 kgs per person compared to a global average of over 12. Similarly, copper – see, both picks that I’m gravitating back to – you know, per capita copper consumption is about 0.6 or 600 grams versus a global average of 3.2 kgs. So in steel, it’s 100 versus a global average of more than double that. So I think this is where there’s a big opportunity. That’s why I said it’s very fundamental, right? It comes back to growth. We can all talk the game on manufacturing. We can all talk the game in terms of what’s going to happen on clean energy. At a very fundamental level, this is the opportunity that’s actually standing in front of India. 

You know, government here aims to increase manufacturing GDP from something at 17% today to over 25% by 2035. India is aspiring to become the factory of the world and the electronics hub of the world too. So all of this, Andrea, is going to need metals. It’s going to need metals and minerals, and this is what India needs to think about: how does it create that enabling environment to allow more mines to be built? Because India does have quite an exciting resource endowment too. 

So India’s putting a lot of capital into this. And like many of the other geographies, India does it in a very sophisticated, digitized way. Even if I look at these production-linked incentives that India is putting in, if I look at things like the critical minerals mission, this will all be India’s enabling or building blocks towards creating a friendlier resource investment, not only for domestic investors like ourselves, but for foreign investors too, which is needed. 

AH: I wanted to ask you about that National Critical Minerals Mission. I mean, that’s investing in exploration, processing, recycling all the way through, focused on those key minerals. How do you see that shaping India’s role in global supply chains for critical minerals? 

DN: So I think about the NCMM, the National Critical Minerals Mission. India’s already come up with a list of 30 minerals which are critical to India. And given the geopolitical complexities and India’s rising demand, you know, whilst having a high dependency on imports of these critical minerals today, it’s going to be difficult to single out, I think, any mineral which is less strategic for India. Exactly back to the point, right? Everything is going to be needed. 

So copper is actually one of those critical for India, and given its versatile use, as we know, and the size of import, rare earths could be one of them. In fact, we’ve got a few blocks now. It could be the next strategic one. So even the less critical minerals like bauxite, which again, you know, I mentioned the aluminium growth that we have. What I did not mention to you, Andrea, is that we want to go in and build another 3 million tons of capacity in the country too. I think bauxite could be something else that we should, as a country, look at how we can enable that through the critical minerals mission. 

AH: Big ambitions. And you mentioned the critical mineral blocks that you have in India. The company has rare earth, vanadium, graphite and tungsten, I believe as well. I mean, how is that going to shape what you do in the long term in terms of investment? Are these new areas that you see becoming potentially at some point in 20 years, maybe as big as aluminium and zinc and copper? 

DN: Yeah, you know, I picture the scene of what people maybe 20 years before us did, and it’s kind of feeling like that, right? What someone did 20 years ago, 50 years ago, in terms of aluminium and iron ore, it does feel like a time for rare earths and some of the other critical minerals too. So, you know, this is all about India really looking at critical minerals independence. So India is currently heavily reliant, as we mentioned, on critical minerals – I think today, 100% import on all of these minerals from lithium, nickel, cobalt. It makes us quite vulnerable to geopolitical tensions, especially in other mineral-rich nations. 

So we see, I think, us having a very strategic role in how India can reduce the dependence, especially on minerals like rare earths. So we are leveraging our expertise – we are in exploration, we are in mineral development – so we can actually use our expertise and accelerate some of this extraction. But as our chairman keeps saying, India needs multiple Vedantas, not just the one, and he’s hoping that this opening up of the economy and creating India as a far more attractive investment destination will actually attract more investment into the country too. 

AH: That’s fascinating. And also to think about this whole broader picture that you’ve painted there of India becoming a major consumer. What does it need to do to become a global producer and exporter of metals? There have obviously been some obstacles on the way to realize this potential. Infrastructure is the one I always think about. What are the challenges? Is it infrastructure? Is it something else? 

DN: A lot of the work I’ve done in the last 10 months is study, right? Is to understand where India is, where she needs to be, and the country – and I have to say, it’s a very proactive country – already starting to address some of this. But it’ll be not too dissimilar to some of the challenges that I’ve seen in certain parts of Africa we have operated in before, even what I saw in Canada when I was there with Vale for those four years in terms of trying to accelerate this. And it’s the same thing. It’s the simplification and de-bottlenecking of some of the regulatory processes. And it’s all about clearances, right? Be it environmental clearances, forestry clearances, et cetera. A bigger issue because India is a very, I think proudly so, very densely populated area. I think there’s a lot of work that needs to be done in terms of land acquisition. So I see that a lot of the projects that we work on, the lead time for land acquisition and then land clearances are quite exhaustive. 

And then from an enabling side, I do feel that India could be more competitive with our royalties and taxes today. It’s almost a system that is built up over a period of time, and maybe these are the things that do need to be level-set. And then physically, it’s going to be all about connectivity and infrastructure, and you can’t enable mining. And you can’t expect mining companies to kind of build all of the necessary infrastructure. This is going to have to be done in partnership with the government in terms of not just power, but roads, et cetera, and other ancillary supports. 

Maybe the last softer point, and I say soft only because it’s not tangible, as in physically, but India also needs to grow and support an R&D culture. But it’s also about creating a country that’s actually investing in mining. And I think more than most countries, India has to be best placed with our capabilities in AI, technology, et cetera, to actually invest now in the R&D side of mining. So let India also start helping us, helping others, reimagine what the future of mining should really look like. And I think coming late to the party is actually an opportunity here. 

AH: And just before we finish with the India side of things, I’m just very curious as to where you see the country’s growth in metals consumption in terms of end uses. Where do you see the growth? 

DN: Yeah, I mean, I said it’s going to be very fundamental, right, in terms of end use. So I think industrialization will be, I think, the foundation. I think India will become a manufacturing hub. And again, from a niche point of view, I think India is very suited to do two things: to look at electronics – and you already see a lot of that gravitating, right? 

We’ve seen Apple and some of the other majors actually come into India and increase their manufacturing capacity – but also EVs. And not four-wheelers. You know, like the rest of Southeast Asia, I think India will do well in terms of EVs on two-wheelers, and I’m actually seeing a huge growth in the country too. So just some ideas, I think, of where India’s opportunities would lie from a manufacturing to serve India first. And I mean, what a captive market, right? 1.4 billion people. India serving herself first is huge. But to build this kind of capacity and to serve the rest of the world, I think, is also a very big opportunity for us over the next five to ten years easily. 

AH: Well, of course, that rise of India isn’t happening in a vacuum, is it? So we know that around the world, geopolitics is definitely shaping and reshaping constantly how metals are flowing, from tariffs to export controls, whether it’s trade alliances, whether it’s resource nationalism. So I’d love to get your take on how all of that is affecting strategy, investment decisions, the markets more broadly. How do you think geopolitics will influence the metals market over the next decade? Now, I’m asking you to get your crystal ball out here because anything can happen, but just a very broad take if you can try. 

DN: Can we go back to talking about Vedanta and India? Seems the crystal ball is closer to me and I’m more in control of some of that. But it’s hard, right, to have a conversation around supercycles and what’s going to happen and not actually integrating or bringing in geopolitics. The economic importance of critical minerals is well known now, and I think it’s quite exciting for people like me that have been in mining for so long to have most conversations captured right now worldwide around mining and minerals. But now I think it’s also right in the center of geopolitics, as we’ve seen in the recent past. 

So critical minerals, you know, took center stage in a lot of deal-making, which has surprised me being in mining for so many years, be it what we’ve seen in China, Ukraine, even just some of the deals coming out of the DRC. Not something that I feel us producers need to spend more time on, but I think it’s something that we need to start factoring in, in terms of how we think about metal flows, or supply chain flows, as we saw from China’s restrictions on rare earths not so long ago, and rare earth magnets and how that showed up supply chain vulnerabilities around the world. 

So I think twofold: maybe supply chain vulnerability and perhaps volatility in metal prices, given the phase of where certain things are, either could be negotiations in wars, it could be negotiations in terms of trade deals, et cetera. And I think that’s just something that I feel as an executive, if you asked me 10 years ago how much time am I spending on scenario planning around geopolitics, I don’t think I would’ve answered like I answer today. And not that I know I can control it, but it’s something that I think we’ve got to constantly factor in. 

I think fortunately countries are now, I think sad but true, we are becoming quite well aware of all of this, and this is why the response of some of the countries, as we spoke about the critical minerals mission, has also been other policies across various countries, be it the Critical Raw Materials Act of the EU, the critical minerals strategy of Australia, our critical minerals mission, or through some of the bilateral trade agreements that we see either on MSP or mineral security partnership. I think such initiatives can absolutely de-risk supply and help with some of this volatility. Although I know there’s opportunity in volatility, but volatility is going to become, I think, more of the way things are over the next while. 

AH: A backdrop, a big part of that is the goal of reducing dependency on China. Do you think if that reliance on China does ease, that India could emerge as that strategic hub for metal supply instead of China or in addition to other places as well, perhaps? 

DN: Yeah, I want to say yes. India has a credible pathway to emerge as a strategic hub for metal supply, I think, supply but tied to the West’s effort to reduce dependency on China. And as we’ve seen, right, this is data-backed. So the combination of resource potential, policy momentum, manufacturing base, and perhaps geostrategic opportunities is definitely compelling. But I want to be cautious, right? A successful emergence is not guaranteed. It’s going to hinge on execution across mining, processing, manufacturing, infrastructure, regulation, and international partnerships. So the answer is yes, I think it’s going to be a credible pathway, and it comes with a lot of, I would say, factors that we would need to constantly look at. Definitely.  

AH: You talked about partnerships. One of those factors are tariffs. The US obviously recently imposed additional tariffs on Indian exports. Combined with the reciprocal ones, some Indian exports to the US now face tariffs of up to 50%. So given that India is primarily that consumer-driven economy we’ve seen in terms of metals and its exports to the US are quite minimal, how are tensions like that influencing long-term investments, strategic planning, and so on in India’s metal sector? There’s got to be some kind of impact. 

DN: Every crisis creates opportunities and opens doors for multiple avenues. When the US imposed 25% tariffs on steel and 10% tariff on aluminium in 2018, India diversified export markets towards Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, and even in Africa. So the ongoing trade tension, I believe, is not too dissimilar. It’s almost, in some ways, trained and supported India in terms of how we’ve actually reacted to this. And actually, Andrea, if you look at the data, India has limited exposure to the US market in terms of metals and minerals, and India had started partnerships with other countries whilst developing its own domestic market. For example, you know, India’s Ministry of Mines has made a memorandum of understanding with 11 countries in the last 5 years. So since 2018. Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Italy, Japan, Mali, just some of those countries. And most recently, we’ve seen the headlines, right, where India has concluded FTAs with the UK, with the UAE, Australia, I think even an EFTA, so the European Free Trade Association as well. 

So 2018 built up a bit of a playbook, and that playbook was used more recently. And maybe bringing it closer to home in Vedanta, we only export less than 2% to the US. And as I mentioned, I mean, just to pick on a couple of the metals, almost 67% to 70% of our aluminum stays in the country. And similarly, 75% of our zinc metal stays in India too. So too does our lead and silver. So I think, Andrea, from an impact point of view, India seems to be following the playbook we’ve already had, and then from a Vedanta point of view, limited exposure today. But coming back to that, watching and looking at how the world evolves, I’m also certain that global metal trade flows will fundamentally change over the next three to five years. 

AH: Yeah, and well, these shifts are definitely changing the rules of the game. You mentioned that opportunity to work with others, these kind of multilateral, bilateral agreements and so on. How are you getting involved as a company in translating those commitments into actual projects, whether it’s domestically or abroad? And I’m talking here in terms of India signing up to these agreements. We’ve focused a little bit on what it’s doing domestically. What about internationally? 

DN: We are a domestic-first company. So most of this goes to India because this is where the need is. So from an international point of view outside of Africa, and now in the UAE, you would’ve seen that we’ve also signed an MOU with the government of Saudi Arabia on a copper smelter that we are working through in terms of the feasibility study, and also made the commitment to do a copper rod mill in Saudi as well. Other than that, the strategy has not been to follow some of these FTAs from an opportunity point of view in terms of investment in another geography, but what we do look at is how could we leverage some of these FTAs for perhaps some of the raw materials that we might need coming back into India. It’s very strategically and tactically an India-first strategy for the company. 

AH: Do you think that within all of that, there are opportunities therefore, for Vedanta to create alliances of its own abroad to secure this access to these, whether it’s technology or different markets, raw materials, et cetera, and bring that back in? 

DN: Absolutely. Absolutely. So you know, immediately when the UK FTA was signed, because Vedanta Resources is a UK-based company, the very next day I had the finance team mapping all of the potential opportunities to actually look at how we can leverage that. Because in some of these bilaterals, we also want to be first in line in terms of getting some of those benefits. So yes, absolutely. 

AH: And in terms of regions, you’ve mentioned the UAE, the Middle East, you’ve talked about Africa. Are they the key ones that are the most strategic to you, or does it depend on what comes up and where it is? 

DN: Those are key for so many reasons. If I look at what we’re doing in Zambia, the president has an ambition of 3 million tons by 2031. We believe that KCM’s endowment is the only way to support that kind of ambition. In the UAE, I mean, if you look at power, the UAE is such a competitive, outside of actually inviting a lot of foreign investment because they want to diversify, from a power competitiveness point of view, it makes absolute sense that the UAE should be looked at as a hub district for beneficiation, which is what’s happening across iron ore, et cetera. So that is why we are keen on the UAE. And then again, India. So we might be massive in terms of footprint, but we are keeping it very simple to make sure that it’s an India-first strategy. 

AH: And technology, I’ve got to talk to you a little bit about that. Very recently we saw the announcement about Copper Tech. Now you’ve talked about copper as being one of your favorite picks, so maybe you can tell me a little bit more about that, just on a high level to better understand what you’re doing there. 

DN: Oh, absolutely. So when you saw that announcement on Copper Tech, you would’ve seen the headline on “Powering the Copper Century.” So I think the case for it is very clear. We have a very large business in KCM, and we believe that right now all conditions are pointing to an American capital market that should be tapped into. For two reasons. I think both, firstly it’s there, and secondly, the need is there. America still has a huge reliance on imports to support its own companies and America’s demand through data centers and for datas, even then they increased, I think perhaps maybe two, three times, what I’m seeing in terms of global averages right now. 

So for all of those reasons, a lot of things came together to say that if we want to build a copper – and it’s not just copper, we call it copper-tech metals – but this is the start of something, right? We can look at bringing in some of the other exploration potential that we have, not just for copper, maybe cobalt as well into this. But this could be the start of something that we build, supporting a geography where the need is so abundant today. 

AH: Fascinating. I look forward to seeing how that unfolds. So I do want to bring it back to something more personal. Deshnee, you are an Indian woman. You grew up in a township in Durban, South Africa. You are one of the few women leading a major mining group, and you are in a very narrow, tiny little club there. There aren’t very many that I can think of. So what changes do you hope to see to this leadership landscape given all of that? And then do you actually think that they’re going to happen? Because you know, we’ve been sitting here for quite a long time and that group is still small. It’s there, but it’s small. 

DN: So I think we can at least acknowledge the change that we see. Perhaps you don’t like the pace, Andrea, but the change is definitely there. I think especially in the last maybe five to eight years. And actually one of the change agents, and I have to give credit to our chairman, Mr. Anil Agarwal. He’s the kind of person that has over the years done so much to actually not just bring women, but pivot to bring more women. I mean, this is the leader that in 2015, which I’ll never forget, called us all CEOs and said, “You better get 15% women in your into your ExCos by Monday.” This was on a Saturday. Yeah. And you know, that’s the kind of bold decisions he’s made. 

Similarly, today I walked into a Vedanta that employs almost a hundred thousand people directly and indirectly, and we have over 22% of them being women. India is still a young mining geography, as I mentioned, and a lot of the rules that women working underground, et cetera, were only advocated through Vedanta and only a mere five years ago. But yet, Andrea, I can go into underground mines in Hindustan Zinc and meet all-female teams, which is extraordinary. 

We have potline sections in Jharsuguda, all women too. I have locals in aluminium, all women too. Okay. So from a Vedanta point of view, I have a boss, Dan, and a boss’s daughter, Priya, who’s our independent chair of Vedanta Limited and our chairwoman of Hindustan Zinc, who are not just advocating on initiatives; this is a DNA for us. So I am confident being at the helm of this company and knowing what our chairman has driven in the last decade, and knowing where he wants to take the company, Vedanta will become a global benchmark for women in industry. I am absolutely predicting that today. So watch the space. 

AH: All right, well that’s certainly got to be a motivating factor, and it’s very good to hear all those statistics. That’s brilliant. That’s on an internal Vedanta level. I’m curious whether you see Vedanta becoming, as a result of everything that you’re doing, more internationally recognized and perhaps even getting to the stage where it’s competing head-on with these major diversified miners like a BHP or a Rio Tinto or a Glencore. Do you see the company getting to that stage? 

DN: Absolutely, and I think in some ways we are. We are doing a lot of great stuff. Perhaps we are not talking enough so that people understand. Our ambition, though, Andrea, is not just to emulate them. But as I mentioned, and some of the initiatives we’re taking, I really want to out-innovate. Because I believe some of the DNA that we have, you know, be it the way we do projects, which company talks about leveraging partnerships, doing good minimum packages? 

And then when I think about some of the technology initiatives that we are doing, and the chairman not only prioritizes partners on the capital side, but most of our operations are completely outsourced, which in itself, I think, is a pretty bold move. So yes, I think the ambition level is to make sure that we not just emulate some of these companies that have been around longer than ourselves, because as I mentioned earlier, we’re only 25 years young, and I want to look at how to out-innovate based on technology, sustainability, and then leverage what I believe is our core strength, which is to be incredibly cost-competitive and efficient. 

In India, we also have something called the population dividend. India’s a young country. There are sites that I go to in the middle of maybe the east of the country, workforce of 3,000-odd people, the average age of 34, all graduates. That’s for me quite a competitive advantage after having been in Canada and where we had completely the opposite, right? A situation where we almost had an age curve that we had to manage. So Andrea, I believe we have all of the ingredients not to emulate, but to out-innovate in some of the aspects that I’ve just spoken about. 

AH: So not looking ahead 20, 25 years time, but maybe just in the next 5, 10 years, how do you want Vedanta, and I guess also India, to be viewed in the global metals ecosystem? Do you think it’s too early for some of these things, or do you think by then we’ll be looking a little bit differently? 

DN: So you said 5 to 10 years. Having known me to be bold, right now is the time to be even bolder. I think as a force for transformation – reliable, responsible, technology-advanced – Vedanta should symbolize India’s rise of the world’s sustainable metals hub, trusted for quality, ethics and innovation. That’s the dream I’m putting on the table today. 

AH: I think that’s a perfect place to stop. Deshnee, thank you so much for joining me. It’s been such a fascinating conversation, whether it’s from India’s metals moment to Vedanta’s global ambitions and your own leadership journey as well. So thank you so much for joining us today. 

DN: Thank you so much for having me, Andrea, and I feel like we’re definitely a step further towards being more spoken about in perhaps circles that, as you mentioned, not been as spoken about previously. Thank you. 

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AH: So that was an interesting take, wasn’t it, Will? 

WA: Yeah, certainly was. I mean, a lot of ground has been covered, a lot of interesting topics and quite eye-opening in many ways. India has been a key member of the BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia, India and China – since the group was first defined in 2001. And as I said to Deshnee, I’ve heard a lot about India over the years. And despite relatively decent GDP growth over the last 20 years or so, with a couple of weak years in between, it’s never really lived up to those expectations, especially not when compared to China. So I think my biggest question, Will, from speaking to Deshnee is, do you think India can realistically emerge as a key alternative to China in metal supply chains? 

WA: Yes, I do. It’s certainly on the consumption side, and with that, they’ll have to build out their own supply chain as well. I mean, if you look at some of the numbers they were talking about, going to a $30 trillion economy by 2047 from currently $4 trillion, that is potentially huge growth. And if you look at what we’ve seen over the last 10 years, is China’s GDP coming down from 10% growth and above, down to the sort of four and a half, five sort of level, whereas we’ve seen more recently, India has been putting in that stronger growth. It’s a huge population, 1.4 billion people. 

It’s going to go through a lot of the stages that China did with urbanization, and that was all really metals-intensive. And not only is it sort of going to go through that urbanization, it’s also going to have to go down the other routes we’re looking at, electrification, building out the data centers. So it’s almost doubly metals-intensive, I’d say, where you’ve got the urbanization plus you’ve got the electrification plus high-tech spending. So yeah, I think its time probably has come indeed. 

AH: Yeah, and it’s starting from the perspective of having a hugely rich mineral endowment. Well, let’s not forget that. I mean, the reserves of aluminium, zinc, copper, and from everything we’re hearing now, increasingly the critical minerals like lithium and nickel and batteries and so on. I mean, this gives India a really great base to supply both domestic and, hopefully, future global demand too. 

WA: Yeah, and I think even that’s important, but I imagine they will look inwardly first and a lot of that investment – with that size of a population – they’re going to be massive consumers themselves as well as China. And it’s interesting that although they have their own resources, they still need to be looking to get secure resources from around the world as well. So yeah, I think there’s a lot of potential for both trade and for building out the industry and the downstream demand side of things. 

AH: Yeah, for sure. I mean, the programs like the whole Make in India thing, as you said, looking inwardly at that infrastructure development, EV adoption, renewable energy investments – they must be driving internal consumption off the scale at the moment, I would imagine as well. 

WA: Yeah. We’ve seen so much of China gaining market share in so many areas across the metals supply chain, but definitely in EV manufacturing and a lot of the high-tech and a lot of the general manufacturing, engineering manufacturing. So if we do see India taking up, following in China’s footsteps, then I think that will help diversify supply chains away from China as well. But, you know, obviously countering that, a lot of that new supply, a lot of that new build in India, will be directed towards the Indian economy. So there’s still room also for other countries outside of India to also grow their supply chains as well. 

AH: Yeah. It was interesting, the whole idea of there being the need for multiple Vedantas, as well – that domestic base, that strong mineral reserve can help Indian producers scale, which seems to be a bit of a prerequisite for competing globally as well. 

WA: We’ve also got all the large mining companies around the world, and India will just become another market for them. The whole second supercycle we are going into is a supercycle, which is going to be much broader than the sort of early 2000s one, which was primarily China, building up China, urbanization, and a lot of trade going into China to support that. India’s obviously going to be big, but most areas in the world are again on that pathway – having renewable energy, power generation, with that will come the grids, the energy storage systems, the EVs, and things like that. You can understand that, it’s very metals intensive, but it’s also much broader based. And it’s going to last a long time because these things just can’t grow overnight everywhere at once. So it’s going to be a long-lasting supercycle. 

AH: Yeah, definitely. I think we also need to look at some of the challenges. We do know that infrastructure issue has been a real problem over the years, and you can have these efficient mining, refining networks, but you need the logistics to be in place, and they are still relatively undeveloped when you compare it to China’s highly integrated supply chains. So I think there’s got to be a lot of investment in ports, in rail, power infrastructure, in order for the sector to really take off. 

WA: Yeah, and as you say, that’s one of the things that could slow it down. As we’ve seen in other areas, the infrastructure – it’s actually raising the funds to do all this as well. It can slow things down, but I think what that means is you are generally going to have a lot of pressure on all aspects of the markets. So you’re going to have infrastructure build-outs, you’re going to have to have all the metals that go into that as well. Plus, the actual manufacturing of the consumer products and the durables goods and things. 

So yeah, I think maybe it’s too bullish or something else has to slow things down, but at the moment there’s a very bullish electrification era and everything that goes in with that. And I think to a great extent, we’ve been so focused on electrification and EVs and energy storage and renewable energy. Maybe we’ve also got, sort of taking off now, more on the AI side, so it’s another sort of area where we’re going to see even more demand as well. So, yeah, some interesting implications. 

And funny enough, one of the things I was talking about in Saudi was if we need more aluminium – if aluminium’s going to be growing – but as you know, aluminium smelters take a huge amount of electricity and so do AIs. So there could be a real pressure on the availability of energy to be able to build out the AI, plus also build out the metal supply chain, which are energy intensive as well. So, yeah, some really interesting potential hurdles and choke points along the way. 

AH: It’ll also be interesting to see how far downstream they can go, because obviously mining’s not the only part. They need to also demonstrate those downstream processing capabilities in order to truly compete and maybe even replace China in some of these critical segments. And it’s a long way off because China really dominates that high tech, large-scale processing piece of the the metals market. 

WA: Yeah, and as they mentioned, EVs – but maybe initially that might be in the two- and three-wheeler sectors as well. Already it looks really impressive how much renewable energy they’re producing there. So with that in mind, electrification does seem a natural way forward. 

AH: It’s going to be really interesting to see whether other global players enter India and really beef up their activities there because at the moment it is quite dominated by Indian companies. So it’ll be really interesting to see if we start to get more of these big diversified majors going in there, or even some midsize companies that go in and build up as they go along. The opportunity’s there. So why have these companies not been going in yet to date? 

WA: Yeah, that will be interesting. India does have quite a few, from my understanding, barriers to import taxes and things like that. So maybe there needs to be a lot of work on that to entice more foreign investment into the country, and maybe we’ll even see more M&A-binding companies buying and merging with non-Indian companies as well. 

AH: Yeah, definitely. Well, it’s been a really good year for Fast Forward and very exciting for all the markets that we cover as well. And the podcasts have looked at tariffs, strategic reserves, stockpiling, big oil, rare earths, Africa, obviously, China’s view of the West, and we played Tinder to learn about carbon markets. And I’m also really sad that Quentin Wilson, who was the legendary star of Top Gear, very sadly passed away earlier this month. We talked about his big passion – cars – and you can go back and listen to that podcast episode, which we released in March. It was a lot of fun to do, so yes, very sad to hear that news. Will, any highlights stand out for you? 

WA: Yeah, I just think there has been an interesting year. It’s always an interesting year in commodities. I think probably the highlight for me is we’ve seen more supply disruptions across the metals and just how impactful they are. But I think maybe we’re underestimating demand because of the whole investment in AI, and I think the fact that’s going to be running with general electrification – maybe we’re going to have a bit of a demand shock. 

AH: Interesting. Keep an eye on that one, then. Well, I’ve really enjoyed all of our sessions and I think for me, in terms of highlights, riding through the Angolan countryside on a train filled with copper from the DRC was a personal highlight. That was back in August. And you can find all these podcasts as well as the first season wherever you get your podcasts, as well as on the Fastmarkets website under the insights section. 

The good news – at least I hope you see it that way – is that Fast Forward will be back in 2026. So if you haven’t subscribed yet, please do and you’ll automatically get season three when it drops in the first quarter. So keep an eye out for big name guests, hot topics and some extra surprises from Fastmarkets coming your way in the new year. 

And Will, thank you for everything this year. It’s been really great doing this podcast with you. I’ve really thoroughly enjoyed everything. 

WA: Yeah, no, it’s been great. It’s been really interesting. We’ve heard some really interesting guests as well and covered some excellent topics. So, look forward to the next episode. 

AH: Well, have a great festive break – try not to eat all the mince pies – and I am really looking forward to next year. 

WA: Great, and you, Andrea. Thank you. 

Fast Forward is a Bearded Fellows production for Fastmarkets. Your host was Andrea Hotter with William Adams.