Hindustan Zinc to double silver output to catch solar wave

By Promit Mukherjee

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Hindustan Zinc Ltd , a subsidiary of billionaire Anil Agarwal's mining conglomerate Vedanta Ltd , aims to double silver output in five years due to rising prices and increased demand from solar panel makers.

The group plans to produce 500 tonnes of silver this fiscal year and double that to 1,000 tonnes by fiscal 2022, Chief Executive Sunil Duggal told Reuters on Tuesday.

Due to an increased demand from investors, who look at gold and silver as safe investments, international silver prices have risen 42 percent to $19.70 an ounce since the start of the year.

Silver has also been boosted by increased demand from solar panel manufacturing and Hindustan Zinc, India's biggest producer of lead, zinc and silver, has increased its focus on the commodity to cash in on an expected increase in Indian demand, especially for industrial use, Duggal said.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has set a target of producing 100 gigawatts (GW) of solar power by 2022 and is incentivising companies to produce solar panels.

"There are opportunities opening up for silver demand in India and a major among them is solar panel manufacturing. We want to increase our output to 1000 tonnes to meet a substantial part of the demand," he said.

Analysts say about 40 tonnes of silver is required to produce panels that would generate 1 GW of solar power.

Duggal said the company plans to ramp up output from its mines in the western state of Rajasthan and boost silver recoveries from its zinc and lead smelters.

"So far we do not recover any silver from zinc. We are investing 1.5 billion Indian rupees ($22.4 million) to increase recovery of silver form our smelters," he added.

The company aims to increase its overall silver recovery from mines and smelters from 60 percent now to 65 percent by March 2017 and 85-90 percent by March 2022.

($1 = 66.8700 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Promit Mukherjee; Editing by Christian Schmollinger and Alexander Smith)