South32 shareholders on Thursday approved the sale of the company’s aluminium business, including the Hillside smelter in Richards Bay, to Alcoa, with 99.45% of votes cast in favour.

The resolution received 3,053,768,710 votes for and 16,922,584 against in a poll at South32’s annual general meeting (AGM), according to the results it released after the meeting. Another 1,722,476 votes were abstentions. Every resolution put to shareholders was carried, South32 said.

The deal, signed on 30 June and subject to conditions, is worth up to US$5.6 billion to South32, chair Stephen Pearce said in his address. Alcoa will acquire South32’s interests in Hillside and in four other operations: Worsley Alumina, the MRN bauxite mine, and a refinery and a smelter in Brazil.

Pearce said the deal was “a step change” for South32. He said it leaves South32 as an upstream base metals producer with more room on its balance sheet to fund growth.

Hillside

Hillside is the largest aluminium smelter in the southern hemisphere and the only primary aluminium producer in South Africa, according to the Presidency. It gave that description in a 6 May advisory for President Cyril Ramaphosa’s planned tour of Hillside on its 30th anniversary.

Through the aluminium value chain, Hillside provides the base for an estimated 29,000 jobs, the Presidency said. It put Hillside’s contribution to gross domestic product over the previous 10 years at about R35 billion. Hillside sells its aluminium in South Africa and abroad.

Hillside and Worsley together accounted for more than 95% of South32’s operational emissions in its 2026 financial year, Pearce said. South32 is reviewing its target of halving net operational emissions by its 2035 financial year, measured against its 2021 financial year, and will report any changes later, he said.

What South32 keeps

Chief executive Matt Daley said the sale would leave a simpler business focused on base metals, with a path to growth in copper and zinc. He said a new operating model would lower overheads by around US$125 million a year.

Daley also told shareholders that Mozal Aluminium, which is not among the assets in the sale, was placed on care and maintenance in March. South32 could not secure enough affordable long-term power for it, he said.

South32’s underlying earnings rose 55% to US$1 billion in the 2026 financial year, and it finished the year with net cash of US$283 million, Daley said. It returned US$327 million to shareholders over the year, Pearce said.

Also on Thursday, Tharisa said Valterra Platinum will buy half of Tharisa Mine’s PGM concentrate from 2027. Our story on mining input costs tracks what miners pay to run their operations.

The pay vote

Shareholders passed the remuneration report, but 18.34% of the votes cast went against it. A resolution to spill the board would have gone to the meeting only if 25% or more had voted against the report, so it was not put, the results show.

The AGM vote is one of the conditions for the deal. The other conditions still have to be met or waived, and South32 expects the sale to complete in the second half of its 2027 financial year, Pearce said.