South Africa's last manganese smelter goes dark in eMalahleni

Transalloys, South Africa's last operating manganese alloy smelter, ceased all furnace operations at its eMalahleni plant on 1 July 2026, citing electricity costs it said made continued production unviable. Chief executive Konstantin Sadovnik said the company had "reached the point where continuing to operate would simply accelerate our own collapse."

Left out of the rescue

Earlier in 2026, Eskom agreed an emergency concessionary tariff of 62c/kWh for ferrochrome producers Glencore-Merafe and Samancor after the National Energy Regulator's approval, but manganese and ferrosilicon smelters received no comparable relief — despite those producers accounting for only about 11% of the ferroalloys sector's total power consumption. Transalloys' exclusion from that framework left it paying far higher rates than its ferrochrome counterparts even as global manganese alloy prices offered little room to absorb the cost.

Jobs and investment at stake

The closure puts about 600 permanent, well-paid jobs directly at risk, with knock-on effects for an estimated 7,000 people who depend on the smelter indirectly, and threatens roughly R6-billion in local investment. Solidarity trade union official Willie Venter warned that "the community there can ill afford another closure of this nature," and appealed for urgent intervention from government and Eskom.

A narrow deadline

Transalloys said that without intervention by 31 July 2026, the shutdown would become permanent, framing the closure as reversible only if a power-price solution similar to the ferrochrome tariff could be agreed within weeks. The company's ultimatum put pressure on Eskom and the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources to extend the same logic used to rescue ferrochrome smelters to the manganese alloy sector.

What it means for South Africa's alloy industry

South Africa is one of the world's largest manganese producers, and the loss of its last domestic alloy smelter would mean more ore leaving the country unprocessed — mirroring the raw-ore export trend already causing concern in the chrome sector. Transalloys' fate is likely to sharpen the debate over whether South Africa's electricity pricing framework should extend targeted relief beyond ferrochrome to the country's wider ferroalloys industry.

Sources

• Daily Maverick: Transalloys faces last days after being shut out of Eskom deal, 02 Jul 2026
• Sunday Independent: South Africa's last manganese smelter went dark, 02 Jul 2026

Photo: Manganese ore from South Africa's Kalahari Manganese Field, the raw material Transalloys smelts into alloy. James St. John, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.