Mozal is an aluminium smelter joint project in Beluluane Industrial Park, Maputo, Mozambique.[2] The project is a smelting facility that began operations as a producer of aluminium exclusively for export. The smelter is located 20 kilometres (12 mi) west of the city of Maputo in the south of the country.
Mozal was a joint venture between BHP Billiton (47.1 percent), Mitsubishi Corporation (25 percent), Industrial Development Corp. of South Africa (24 percent), and the Government of Mozambique (3.9 percent).[3]
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.[4]
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 tonnes 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 having a total annual production of around 580,000 tonmes. It is responsible for 30 percent of the country’s official exports and also uses 45 percent of the electricity produced in Mozambique.[5]
In February 2013, Mozal signed an agreement under which it would supply 50,000 tonnes of aluminium to Midal Cables, one of the world's largest manufacturers of aluminium cables.[6]
Midal's factory in Mozambique started operation in 2014, with a capacity of 50 ktpa of aluminium rods and 24 ktpa of aluminium wire.[7]
