Mozal is an

aluminium smelter Aluminium smelting is the process of extracting aluminium from its oxide, alumina, generally by the Hall-Héroult process. Alumina is extracted from the ore bauxite by means of the Bayer process at an alumina refinery. This is an electrolyti ...

joint project in Beluluane Industrial Park, Maputo,

Mozambique Mozambique (), officially the Republic of Mozambique ( pt, Moçambique or , ; ny, Mozambiki; sw, Msumbiji; ts, Muzambhiki), is a country located in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi ...

. The project is a smelting facility that began operations as a producer of

aluminium Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. I ...

exclusively for export. The smelter is located west of the city of

Maputo Maputo (), formerly named Lourenço Marques until 1976, is the Capital city, capital, and largest city of Mozambique. Located near the southern end of the country, it is within of the borders with Eswatini and South Africa. The city has a popul ...

in the south of the country. Mozal was a joint venture between

BHP Billiton BHP Group Limited (formerly known as BHP Billiton) is an Australian multinational mining, metals, natural gas petroleum public company that is headquartered in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The Broken Hill Proprietary Company was founded ...

(47.1 percent),

Mitsubishi Corporation is Japan's largest trading company (sogo shosha) and a member of the Mitsubishi keiretsu. As of 2022, Mitsubishi Corporation employs over 80,000 people and has ten business segments, including finance, banking, energy, machinery, chemical ...

(25 percent), Industrial Development Corp. of South Africa (24 percent), and the Government of Mozambique (3.9 percent). The project began life in 1998 as part of a recovery programme led by the Mozambican government’s active desire for foreign investment to help rebuild the nation after the country’s civil war in the early 1990s. The Mozal smelter was officially opened in September 2000. It was the first major foreign investment in Mozambique and is the biggest private-sector project in the country. Originally commissioned as a 250 ktpa (250,000 ton per annum) smelter, Mozal was followed by an extension (Mozal II) in 2003-04, and it is now the largest aluminium producer in Mozambique and the second-largest in

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

having a total annual production of around 580,000 tons. It is responsible for 30 percent of the country’s official exports and also uses 45 percent of the electricity produced in Mozambique. In February 2013, Mozal signed an agreement under which it will supply 50,000 tonnes of aluminium to Midal, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of aluminium cables. Midal is to set up a factory in Mozambique and use aluminium ingots produced at the Mozal smelter as its raw material. This is the first time that aluminium produced by Mozal will be used in Mozambique, as up until this agreement, Mozal exclusively exported its aluminium. BHP Billiton holdings were demerged into

South32 South32 is a mining and metals company headquartered in Perth, Western Australia. It was spun out of BHP Billiton on 18 May 2015. It is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange with secondary listings on the Johannesburg and London Stock ...

References

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{{coord, 25, 54, 55, S, 32, 24, 47, E, region:MZ_type:landmark, display=title Aluminium companies of Mozambique Aluminium smelters BHP Companies based in Maputo category:Mitsubishi companies