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    South32’s Mozal aluminium smelter pause: key implications for project teams

    December 17, 2025|

    Reviewed by Tom Sullivan

    South32’s Mozal aluminium smelter pause: key implications for project teams

    First reported on Australian Mining

    30 Second Briefing

    South32 will place its Mozal aluminium smelter in Mozambique into care and maintenance from about March 2026, citing sustained low aluminium prices and high energy costs. The 580,000‑tonne‑per‑year smelter, which uses imported alumina and relies heavily on power from the 2,075MW Cahora Bassa hydro scheme, will wind down operations over the next two years while South32 reviews long‑term options. The move affects a major regional offtaker of bauxite and alumina logistics, and contractors tied to potline maintenance, anode supply and port handling at Maputo.

    Technical Brief

    • Care-and-maintenance will require controlled potline shut-down, bath removal and safe handling of frozen electrolyte.
    • Long-term idle status demands corrosion protection of busbars, transformers and rectiformers, plus periodic HV testing.
    • Similar smelters with single-source hydro power and imported feedstocks face comparable exposure to energy and freight volatility.

    Our Take

    South32’s move to put the Mozal aluminium smelter in Mozambique into care and maintenance around March 2026 comes soon after it agreed to sell the Cerro Matoso ferronickel operation in Colombia (reported 3 December 2025), signalling a broader reshaping of its smelting footprint rather than a one-off asset decision.

    Within our 340 Mining stories, South32 appears frequently in portfolio-optimisation pieces, and the combination of an aluminium smelter pause in Mozambique and the Cerro Matoso divestment suggests the company is likely reallocating capital towards upstream base metals and away from energy-intensive downstream processing.

    For aluminium projects in our database, care-and-maintenance decisions like this typically preserve optionality on future restart while allowing operators to renegotiate power tariffs and raw material contracts, which will be critical in a market where power costs dominate smelter competitiveness in regions such as southern Africa.

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    Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.

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