By: OrePulse

Mozambique's Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy signed investment memorandums worth $4.2 billion with a group of companies this week, as the government pushed to expand domestic processing of the country's mineral output rather than continuing to export raw ore. The agreements span more than a dozen separate projects across several provinces.

The agreements were signed on Tuesday on the sidelines of the 2026 Annual Conference on Mineral Value Addition and Development, held in the port city of Nacala, in the northern province of Nampula, the ministry said. The conference brought together government officials, mining companies and investors to discuss expanding domestic processing of Mozambique's mineral output rather than exporting it unprocessed.

The projects are meant to add value locally to graphite, copper, gemstones, silica sand, quartz, tin, tantalum, tungsten, titanium, zircon, hafnium and iron, according to the government. Several of the planned plants are clustered along the Nacala Corridor, the rail and port route that links Mozambique's mineral-producing interior to the deep-water port of Nacala on the Indian Ocean coast.

Among the largest single commitments, Nacala Resources Lda. signed a memorandum to build a spherical graphite processing plant in Nacala-a-Velha, in Nampula province. Spherical graphite is a processed form of the mineral used in battery anodes, and Mozambique holds substantial graphite deposits that have so far been exported mostly as unprocessed concentrate.

Chiteng Mining agreed to develop a copper processing facility in Moatize, in the central province of Tete, an area already associated with large-scale mining activity. Nova Investimentos signed for a silica sand plant for glass production in Marracuene, in Maputo province, in the south of the country.

Two companies signed for multiple projects along the Nacala Corridor. Zhijiang Sanning Energy Co. Ltd. committed to four plants in the Nacala region for processing graphite, titanium, zircon and hafnium, while Nacala Park Management Co. Lda. signed memorandums for four further mineral-processing and advanced-materials plants along the same corridor.

Other agreements targeted gemstones and industrial minerals. Auromoz Lda. signed for a gemstone cutting and polishing plant in the central province of Manica, and Sandare Resources S.A. signed a separate memorandum for a gemstone beneficiation and processing plant in the Nampula-Nacala-a-Velha area.

Kunyan Crystech New Materials Technology Dalian Company Limited committed to an industrial quartz processing plant that the government said would supply materials for new-energy technologies. RH Cimentos S.A. signed for a quartz sand processing plant in Nacala.

Grand Ganges Exploration & Mining signed a memorandum to add value to Mozambique's tin, tantalum and tungsten production, three minerals the mining industry groups together as the "3T" minerals. ZLG Oasis signed for an iron smelting project in Manica province, which the government linked to fluorite deposits in the area.

The Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy cautioned that the memorandums mark only an initial step and do not guarantee that the projects will be built. "The signing of memorandums does not in itself mean that the projects have entered the implementation phase," the ministry said.

The conference is known in Mozambique by its Portuguese-language acronym, CAVAME-d 2026. The minerals covered by the new agreements are used across electronics, energy and industrial supply chains; graphite, in particular, is used mainly in battery anodes.

The $4.2 billion figure represents the combined value of the memorandums signed in Nacala, the ministry said, rather than capital already committed to construction, since the agreements have not yet advanced to an implementation phase.