Making the world greener, stronger, smarter

Hindalco MD Satish Pai talks about the company's future path and the role of portfolio diversification

Satish Pai, Managing Director, Hindalco Industries

At Hindalco, we manufacture materials that make the world greener, stronger and smarter. We are a leading player in aluminium and copper manufacturing. We are also the world’s largest aluminium rolling company and one of Asia’s biggest producers of primary aluminium. We have a revenue of $18bn, with an EBIDTA of over $2bn. Our biggest strength is our talent pool of 35,000 people.

What makes Hindalco excel is a strong focus on results, perseverance, world-class facilities, backward and forward integration in the value chain, and the sheer determination of our people. The leadership culture in Hindalco is of integrity beyond question, quick decisions and less bureaucracy, handling situations with resilience when confronting adversity or opposition, focus on compliance and a will to develop people and careers.

In India, our aluminium operations encompass the gamut of operations from bauxite mining, alumina refining, coal mining, captive power generation and aluminium smelting to downstream value addition of aluminium rolling, extruding and foils. Our strength in aluminium products differentiates us from our competition. A significant portion of Hindalco’s sales come from value-added products. This is in line with our ‘market-grower’ philosophy. Hindalco has introduced numerous new products in the Indian market, including branded roofing sheets, branded kitchen foils and input material for bicycles and railway wagons. More recently, we have introduced innovations that replace steel with more efficient choices, such as aluminium bulkers and gas cylinders.

Hindalco’s wholly-owned US-based subsidiary Novelis Inc is the global leader in aluminium rolled products and the world's largest recycler of aluminium. Novelis has 24 operating plants in 10 countries and across 4 continents.

Hindalco’s copper division, Birla Copper, operates one of the largest single location custom copper smelters in the world. Hindalco produces LME grade copper cathodes, continuous cast copper rods and precious metals like gold and silver. We are also one of the major contributors for railway electrification.

The future

We believe that companies that will survive and thrive are ones that will have integrity at one end and compliance at the other. We believe in values, are committed to our Code of Conduct and we abide by the Hindalco Execution Framework.

We are taking a strategic path forward, diversifying the portfolio and investing in growth opportunities. Our ambition is to shape the automotive light-weighting industry through technology leadership. Auto is the next big switch and we will have to create new products in this market. We need to innovate, to counter steel on one side and composites on the other. Innovation will play a critical role in shaping the future growth path for Hindalco.