London: The London-listed Indian zinc, copper and aluminium company said that it is evaluating to build a 500,000 tonnes-a-year aluminium smelter at Jharsuguda in Orissa.
Strong pricing and volumes at Vedanta Resources more than doubled first-half core earnings on Thursday as the company confirmed it was looking at building an aluminium smelter to meet growing demand.
The company also said growth in non-Indian markets should yield additional export-led opportunities.
Vedanta also painted a positive outlook for metals demand during the rest of the year.
"We continue to see solid and steady growth in the underlying demand for our metals. The additional volumes coming from our newly commissioned projects meet this strong demand," Executive Chairman Anil Agarwal said in a statement.
Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) jumped 110 per cent to $336.5 million for the six months to end-September, just beating a company-polled consensus forecast from seven analysts of $334.8 million.
Basic earnings per share leapt 213 per cent to 37.6 US cents from 12 cents a year ago.
A raft of expansion projects and strong prices across its portfolio have underpinned a 67 per cent increase in Vedanta's share price in the last 6 months.
During that time its shares have outperformed those of the four FTSE-100 listed diversified miners by 17 per cent.
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