Mozal, Mozambique’s largest industry, produced 248,000 tons of aluminum in the last nine months before closing in March, a 6% decrease compared to the same period in 2025.
According to data from the Australian company South32, which leads the smelter on the outskirts of Maputo, Mozal had produced 265,000 tons of aluminum in the same nine months of the previous fiscal year. Meanwhile, sales in the same period fell by 7%, from 246,000 to 229,000 tons of aluminum through last March.
The decline is explained by South32 in a recent market update consulted by Lusa as being due to the “smelter entering a care and maintenance regime on March 15, 2026.”
However, sales actually increased by 8% in the quarter ending in March 2026, specifically due to the commercialization of “remaining finished product stock” ahead of the planned closure.
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Even so, the information adds that Mozal entered the care and maintenance regime “exceeding the production forecast by 3%.” South32 confirmed on March 16 that Mozal, Mozambique’s largest industrial operation, has been under a care and maintenance regime since the previous day, with plans to spend 52.4 million euros on the smelter’s suspension, including worker redundancies.
“Over the last six years, we have engaged extensively with the Government of the Republic of Mozambique, with Eskom [the South African utility that buys energy from Mozambique and sold it to the smelter], and other stakeholders, but we were unable to secure a sufficient and affordable energy supply for Mozal beyond March 2026,” said the Chief Executive Officer of South32 (which holds 63.7% of the smelter), Graham Kerr.
With the current status of the smelter—one of the largest in Africa, with over 1,000 direct workers and 4,000 indirect workers—halting production, South32 expects to spend 60 million dollars (52.4 million euros), including on “contract terminations,” while maintenance alone will cost five million dollars (4.4 million euros) annually.
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“While this is not the outcome we wanted, we are proud of the history and significant contribution that Mozal has made to the local community and the Mozambican economy in its 25 years of operation,” Kerr added in the same South32 communication.
South32 previously considered the energy tariff proposed to the Mozal aluminum smelter “totally unsustainable,” thus justifying its closure, without ruling out reactivating Mozambique’s largest industry if conditions change.
In a previous call with Australian investors, the transcript of which Lusa accessed regarding South32’s latest results, the CEO explained that the “only formal offer” for energy supply by the South African utility Eskom was nearly 100 dollars per megawatt-hour (MWh), whereas “outside of China, less than 1%” of smelters have contracts above 50 dollars per MWh.
