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 km 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