The first production of zinc in quantity seems to have been in India starting from 12th century and later in China from 16th century. In India, zinc was produced at Zawar from the 12th to the 18th centuries, although some zinc artifacts appear to have been made during classical antiquity in Europe. The sphalerite ore found here was presumably converted to zinc oxide via roasting, although no archaeological evidence of this has been found. Smelting is thought to have been done in sealed cylindrical clay retorts which were packed with a mixture of roasted ore, dolomite, and an organic material, perhaps cow dung, and then placed vertically in a furnace and heated to around 1100 °C.  Carbon monoxide produced by the charring of the organic material would have reduced the zinc oxide to zinc vapour, which then liquefied in a conical clay condenser at the bottom of the retort, dripping down into a collection vessel. Over the period 1400–1800, production is estimated to have been about 200 kg/day.   Zinc was also smelted in China from the mid-sixteenth century on.
Large-scale zinc production in Europe began with William Champion, who patented a zinc distillation process in 1738. In Champion's process, zinc ore (in this case, the carbonate, ZnCO) was sealed in large reduction pots with charcoal and heated in a furnace. The zinc vapor then descended through an iron condensing pipe until reaching a water-filled vessel at the bottom. Champion set up his first zinc works in Bristol, England, but soon expanded to Warmley and by 1754 had built four zinc furnaces there.  Although Champion succeeded in producing about 200 tons of zinc, his business plans were not successful and he was bankrupt by 1769. However, zinc smelting continued in this area until 1880.
Early European zinc production also took place in Silesia, in Carinthia, and in Liège, Belgium. In the Carinthian process, used in works established in 1798 by Bergrath Dillinger, a wood-fueled furnace heated a large number of small vertical retorts,  and zinc vapor then dropped through a ceramic pipe into a common condensation chamber below. This process was out of use by 1840. The Belgian and Silesian processes both used horizontal retorts.   In Silesia, Johann Ruhberg built a furnace to distill zinc in 1799, at first using pots but later changing to flat-bottomed retorts called "muffles", attached to horizontal tubes bent downwards in which the zinc condensed. The Silesian process eventually merged with the Belgian process. This process, developed by Jean-Jacques Daniel Dony, was introduced 1805–1810, and used retorts with a cylindrical cross-section.  Condensers were horizontal clay tubes extending from the ends of the retorts.  The merged "Belgo-Silesian" horizontal retort process was widely adopted in Europe by the third quarter of the 19th century, and later in the United States.
Experimental attempts to extract zinc via electrolysis begun in the 19th century, but the only commercially successful application before 1913 was a process, used in Great Britain and Austria, where zinc and chlorine were co-produced by electrolysis of an aqueous zinc chloride solution.  The Anaconda Copper Company, at Anaconda, Montana, and the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company, at Trail, British Columbia, both built successful electrolytic plants in 1915 using the currently used zinc sulfate process.  This method has continued to grow in importance and in 1975 accounted for 68% of world zinc production.
The continuous vertical retort process was introduced in 1929 by the New Jersey Zinc Company. This process used a retort with silicon carbide walls, around 9 meters high and with a cross section of 2 by 0.3 meters. The walls of the retort were heated to 1300 °C and briquettes consisting of sintered zinc ore, coke, coal, and recycled material were fed into the top of the retort. Gaseous zinc was drawn off from the top of the column and, after a 20-hour journey through the retort, spent briquettes were removed from the bottom.  To condense the gaseous zinc, the company first used a simple brick chamber with carborundum baffles, but efficiency was poor. During the 1940s a condenser was developed which condensed the zinc vapor on a spray of liquid zinc droplets, thrown up by an electrical impeller.
The electrothermic process, developed by the St. Joseph's Lead Company, was somewhat similar.  The first commercial plant using this process was built in 1930 at the present site of Josephtown, Pennsylvania. The electrothermic furnace was a steel cylinder around 15 meters high and 2 meters in diameter, lined with firebrick. A mixture of sintered ore and coke was fed into the top of the furnace, and a current of 10,000–20,000 amperes, at a potential difference of 240 volts, was applied between carbon electrodes in the furnace, raising the temperature to 1200–1400 °C.  An efficient condenser was devised for this process from 1931–1936; it consisted of a bath of liquid zinc which the exhaust gases were drawn through by suction. The zinc content of the gas stream was absorbed into the liquid bath.
The blast-furnace process was developed starting in 1943 at Avonmouth, England by the Imperial Smelting Corporation, which became part of Rio Tinto Zinc in 1968. It uses a spray of molten lead droplets to condense the zinc vapor.