Plant Head - Strategic Precious Metals and Minor Metals

Plant Head - Strategic Precious Metals and Minor Metals

Responsibilities

Plant Operations Management

• Lead daily plant operations to achieve production volume, throughput, recovery, metal yield, plant availability, and dispatch targets as per business plan.
• Optimize process parameters across smelting, refining, leaching, electrowinning/electrolysis, crystallization, casting, and allied processes based on feed composition and plant conditions.
• Monitor shift-wise performance, identify bottlenecks, minimize unplanned downtime, and ensure timely troubleshooting of process deviations.
• Ensure effective coordination between production, maintenance, quality, stores, utilities, logistics, and commercial teams for smooth plant operations.
• Review and strengthen SOPs, operating discipline, shift handover practices, daily management systems, and production reporting mechanisms.
• Drive continuous improvement in OEE, equipment reliability, manpower productivity, material flow, and process stability.

Safety, Health and Environment

• Drive a zero-harm and LTI-free culture across the plant by implementing robust safety systems, behavior-based safety practices, and regular shopfloor engagement.
• Ensure compliance with applicable statutory requirements including Factories Act, environmental regulations, hazardous waste handling rules, safety standards, and internal EHS guidelines.
• Oversee management of effluent, emissions, fumes, dust, slag, hazardous material storage, and waste disposal in coordination with EHS and environment teams.
• Lead incident investigations, root cause analysis, corrective and preventive actions, emergency preparedness, mock drills, and safety audits.
• Promote disciplined usage of PPE, permit-to-work systems, HIRA/JSA, SOP compliance, and contractor safety management.

Quality, Metallurgy & Process Excellence

• Ensure achievement of product quality standards including metal purity, impurity control, physical quality, casting quality, and customer specification compliance.
• Work closely with laboratory, R&D, and process engineering teams to improve yield, recovery, impurity removal, energy efficiency, and process robustness.
• Review process data, assay results, mass balance, heat balance, and quality trends to identify improvement opportunities.
• Reduce rework, rejection, customer complaints, off-spec production, and process variability through structured corrective actions.
• Support new product development, process trials, technology improvements, and scale-up initiatives for minor metals and by-products.

High Value Project

• Conceive, evaluate, and drive high-value projects related to recovery, processing, and value maximization of minor metals in the copper value chain, including lead (Pb), zinc (Zn), chlorine (Cl), rhodium (Rh), bismuth, selenium, tellurium, and platinum group metals (PGMs).

Cost, Budgeting & CAPEX

• Own plant OPEX budgets and drive cost optimization across power, fuel, chemicals, consumables, refractory, electrodes, maintenance, manpower, and logistics.
• Track cost per ton, conversion cost, specific energy consumption, consumable usage, productivity, and variance against budget.
• Plan and execute plant shutdowns, debottlenecking projects, modification jobs, and CAPEX initiatives within approved cost, quality, safety, and timeline parameters.
• Support technical evaluation of vendors, contractors, spares, equipment, consumables, and service contracts in coordination with procurement and commercial teams.
• Identify value engineering opportunities and drive initiatives for capacity enhancement, yield improvement, waste reduction, and cost competitiveness.

People Leadership & Capability Building

• Lead, guide, and develop teams across production, shift operations, process, quality, maintenance coordination, and support functions.
• Build a high-performance work culture focused on safety, accountability, operational discipline, problem-solving, and continuous improvement.
• Develop succession plans for critical roles and ensure capability building of engineers, supervisors, operators, and shift in-charges.
• Drive training on SOPs, safety practices, process fundamentals, equipment operation, emergency response, and quality requirements.
• Ensure effective manpower planning, shift rosters, contractor deployment, productivity tracking, and employee engagement across the plant

Systems, Compliance & Continuous Improvement

• Implement and sustain systems such as TPM, 5S, Kaizen, Lean Manufacturing, Daily Management, ISO systems, and audit compliance.
• Coordinate with regulatory bodies, auditors, internal stakeholders, and cross-functional teams for statutory, quality, safety, and environmental compliance.
• Ensure accurate production reporting, SAP transactions, MIS dashboards, inventory control, and documentation for audit readiness.
• Leverage DCS/SCADA, process data, digital dashboards, and analytics to improve decision-making and operational visibility.
• Ensure reliability of all critical equipment through asset optimization and timely corrective actions.
• Drive process optimization initiatives to improve plant efficiency, productivity, cost effectiveness, and operational stability.

Qualifications

Education Qualification: 

• B.E./B.Tech in Metallurgy, Chemical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or related discipline. M.Tech/M.E. in Metallurgy, Chemical, Materials Science, or Process Engineering will be preferred.

Experiences:

• 18 - 20 years of relevant experience in metals, non-ferrous metals, minor metals, smelting, refining, electrolysis/electrowinning, chemical processing, or continuous/process plant operations.
• 10-15yrs of experience in handling plant at highest level