Hindustan Zinc Limited has always been a good company with great potential. What we did is simply improve upon the legacies. We made a good company better,” says M S Mehta, CEO of erstwhile PSU Hindustan Zinc Limited that was taken over by global metal giant Vedanta group’s Sterlite Industries on April 11, 2002. Mehta is being modest. Not only has Hindustan Zinc scaled up capacities, production levels and profits multifold since its disinvestment, it has been in mission mode throughout — a new 1.7 lakh-tonne smelter plant commissioned just last week took only 20 months to set up whereas the world average is 28-30 months. More importantly, the new plant makes the company the world’s third largest zinc producer, it is already the most cost efficient miner globally and will soon be the world’s lowest-cost zinc producer as well.