Dreams of empire
Sterlite Industries of India Limited and Vedanta Aluminium Limited (VAL) are subsidiaries of Vedanta Resources Plc, a publicly-traded British metals and mining company owned principally by London-based industrialist Anil Agarwal.
Patna-born Agarwal started out as a scrap metal merchant in the 1970s in Mumbai. In 1983, he set up a small copper cable manufacturing unit. In 1998, his company, now called Sterlite, cashed in on the telecommunications boom in India, supplying copper cables to telecom companies, and raked in Rs 20 crore in profits.
Today 53-year-old Agarwal is 230th on the Forbes list of billionaires with a net worth of US $3 billion. Vedanta Resources owns 68.1 per cent shares in Sterlite. Though its principal operations are located in India, Vedanta also operates in Australia, Armenia and Zambia.
The company is India's biggest zinc producer, its second largest copper producer, and number three in aluminium.The multinational's aluminium business currently comprises VAL (still in the project phase), BALCO, a former public sector unit in which Vedanta now owns 51 per cent stake, and Madras Aluminium Company.
Vedanta's enterprises have been dogged by controversy, starting with Sterlite's attempts to locate a copper smelter in Ratnagiri, Maharashtra, in the 1990s, which had to be shelved after opposition. It was set up in Tuticorin, Tamil Nadu, in 1994, where protests remain.