Investors flocked to diversified miner South32 on Thursday morning as production from its Australian manganese division returned to normal levels, allowing the group to maintain full-year guidance across its commodities. The miner’s share price on the JSE jumped 4.68% in early morning trading, hitting its best level in more than 18 months. Overall, manganese production soared 58% in the December 2025 half-year.
The Australian manganese operations were put on hold early last year after severe storms made it difficult to repair key infrastructure, which had been damaged by Tropical Cyclone Megan a year before. An operational recovery plan set the company back $47m and resulted in it claiming $350m in external insurance payments in the 2025 financial year. The unit, which came back online in the quarter to end-June, suffered a full-year loss of more than $100m.
The latest trading update shows production levels normalising. Output at the Australian manganese division was up 26% year on year, while South African manganese rose 4% as it completed planned maintenance. Armed with a healthier balance sheet, the miner continued to pump money into its Hermosa project in the Patagonia mountains southeast of Arizona.
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Hermosa is the only advanced mine development project in the US that can produce two minerals — zinc and manganese — which the US government recognises as critical. The group spent $338m in the December half-year, having invested $517m into the operation in the year to end-June, which was nearly four times the previous year’s growth capex. “We progressed construction of Hermosa’s large-scale, long-life, Taylor zinc-lead-silver project, and completed the exploration decline for the Clark battery-grade manganese deposit,” CEO Graham Kerr said.
South32 reported alumina production up 3% for the first half, while aluminium was up 2%. Mozal Aluminium, its large-scale Mozambican smelter, is set to wind down by March, with nearly30,000 jobslikely to be lost.
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