Indian billionaire Anil Agarwal completes $466 million expansion of South African zinc mine

Indian mining billionaire Anil Agarwal's Vedanta has doubled the size of its Gamsberg zinc mine in South Africa's Northern Cape, and President Cyril Ramaphosa used the opening on Friday to press the company to refine the metal in the country rather than ship it abroad.

Ramaphosa inaugurated the Gamsberg Phase II concentrator plant at Aggeneys on Oct. 16, seven years after he opened the first phase of the mine in 2019. The expansion doubles annual ore capacity to about 8 million tonnes from 4 million tonnes and lifts zinc-in-concentrate production capacity to about 500,000 tonnes a year, according to the Presidency, putting Gamsberg among the largest zinc operations in the world.

"We want the zinc that is mined here to become the foundation of industries that manufacture here," Ramaphosa said.

Agarwal, who founded and chairs the Vedanta group, runs the mine through Vedanta Zinc International, the group's South African arm. His daughter Priya Agarwal Hebbar, a non-executive director of Vedanta Resources, attended the ceremony with Vijay Kumar, chief executive of Vedanta Zinc International, India's High Commissioner Prabhat Kumar and Northern Cape Premier Zamani Saul.

The investment

Vedanta approved the Phase II project in early 2022 at an estimated cost of R7 billion ($420 million), with construction designed to add a second 4 million-tonne-a-year concentrator. The capital cost estimate stood at $466 million as of June 2025.

Ramaphosa tied the project to a broader pledge Vedanta Zinc International made at South Africa's first investment conference in 2018. "Its commitment of approximately R21 billion was an important endorsement of South Africa's economic potential," he said. That is about $1.26 billion at current exchange rates. "Vedanta did not wait for every challenge to be resolved before investing."

More than 1,500 people worked on the construction of Phase II, and the expanded operation is expected to sustain between 800 and 1,000 jobs once running, with recruitment mostly from the Northern Cape.

Push for a smelter

Most of Ramaphosa's speech was a call for South Africa to stop exporting raw and semi-processed minerals and to build the factories that use them.

"Why should the mineral wealth beneath our soil create more industrial opportunities elsewhere than it creates here at home?" he asked. "We must be a country that does more than extract the minerals that the world needs."

He welcomed Vedanta's plan to build zinc smelting capacity in the Northern Cape, which would allow the country to produce refined zinc metal instead of concentrate. He also said the Namakwa Special Economic Zone, where Vedanta is an anchor investor, is central to the province's industrial plans and should draw in other companies.

Ramaphosa acknowledged that a project of that size needs commercially viable electricity and reliable infrastructure. "Government must work with Vedanta and other partners to address these requirements," he said.

The idea is not new for Agarwal. In 2018, as the first phase of Gamsberg neared production, Vedanta said it was studying a smelter and refinery at the site that could produce up to 250,000 tonnes of zinc metal a year, as part of a $700 million to $800 million plan to develop the region's zinc industry. That project has not been built.

Ramaphosa also pointed to Vedanta's spending on bursaries, skills training and water projects in the area, as well as the JF Boeboe Van Wyk Oncology Centre in Springbok, the main town of the Namakwa district.

Vedanta's African portfolio also includes Konkola Copper Mines in Zambia. Agarwal has been arguing this month that the world faces a structural shortage of copper over the next five to 10 years as demand linked to artificial intelligence rises.