Hydometallurgical methods includes roasting, leaching and electrowinning and maybe after electrowinning it needs another pyrometallurgical process (casting) to produce zinc ingots. So directly using pyro methods like ISP (Imperial Smelting Process) seems to be more suitable for producing Zinc from oxide and sulfide ores.
If you want to produce zinc slabs (ingots) for any later use I think that you are correct, but if you use these zinc to coat you can electroplate the pieces directly from solutions.
I think specific energy consumption in the complete pyro method is much higher than RLE (roast-leach-electrowinning) and has more environmental impact. You should consider the maximum purity of zinc ingot produced by both methods and also the possibility of recovery of impurities as by-product. However,the productivity in the pyro processes is higher owing to higher rate of reactions.
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