Maputo, March 13, 2026 (Lusa) - The Mozambican government on Friday called for negotiations to ensure that the Mozal aluminium smelter – the country’s largest industrial facility, which is suspending operations from Sunday – does not come to a standstill, given its size and importance.
“It would always be good to have Mozal or another major industry like Mozal, either larger or of equal size. Even so, regarding Mozal, which has recently been winding down its operations (...), the government would be happy and would welcome it continuing to operate,” said government spokesperson Inocêncio Impissa today at a meeting with journalists in Maputo.
According to Impissa, the Government has no information regarding new operators who might take over that plant – the largest smelter in Africa – following the suspension of operations decided by the Australian firm South32, which owns Mozal. However, he stressed that the aim is to ensure “that infrastructure does not remain idle”, assuring that the Government, at sectoral level, can provide support in this negotiation process with new investors for the facility.
“Because of this, we will first have to look to the entity itself, the company itself, the owner of Mozal, which will have to show an interest in, for example, transferring the operation, or transferring the company, transferring shares and other forms, considering the different ways of transferring responsibilities or ownership of a specific company such as this,” explained the spokesperson.
At least five companies have closed down and dozens of others may halt operations at the Beluluane Industrial Park in southern Mozambique due to Mozal’s suspension, an official source told Lusa today.
“We estimate there are around 25 companies providing goods and services to Mozal. We have already been informed that most of these companies, given the suspension of activities at Mozal, are also considering taking similar action,” said Onório Manuel, director-general of Mozparks, the entity that manages that industrial park – the largest in the country, 20 kilometres from Maputo.
He explained that with Mozal – Mozambique’s largest industrial firm, employing over 1,000 direct staff and 4,000 indirect staff – entering a maintenance and conservation phase, it is now expected that more companies will begin to close, as some of these factories had to remain in operation until the smelter was shut down, “because they were part of the actual process of safely decommissioning Mozal”.
“At the moment, we already have an average of five that have ceased operations, those that were much more closely linked to production, because there are companies specialising in electrical maintenance, industrial maintenance and so on (…). There are already around five companies that have now completely ceased operations with no prospect of resuming,” he noted.
According to Onório Manuel, these shutdowns put around 4,000 jobs at risk in factories neighbouring the smelter: “We are talking about countless jobs in companies linked to Mozal’s value chain, not necessarily at Mozal itself.”
Lusa reported a week ago that the Australian firm South32 considered the proposed energy tariff for the Mozal aluminium smelter in Maputo to be “totally unsustainable”, thereby justifying its closure on 15 March, without ruling out the possibility of restarting Mozambique’s largest industry should conditions change.
In a recent call with Australian investors, the transcript of which Lusa had access to and which involved the presentation of the latest results of the group that leads Mozal and other smelters, the chief executive, Graham Kerr, explained that the “only formal offer” for energy supply from Eskom was almost US$100 per megawatt-hour (MWh), whereas “outside China, less than 1%” of smelters have contracts above US$50 per MWh.
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