South Africa’s smelter sector slipped from warning signs to a full-blown crisis through 2025 as plants scaled back or shut amid crippling electricity and cost pressures.

Business implored government to expedite intervention plans to reduce their power costs, as approved by Cabinet in June this year. But the response was slow, prompting organised labour to blame government inaction for a mounting jobs bloodbath.

The debate broadened as the year progressed. Discussions around taxes and fiscal measures, including a debate over chrome-export taxes, added to industry uncertainty.

By November the situation had turned acute.

Industry deadlines loomed and commentators warned there were just weeks to find solutions before more plants went offline. Several smelters and their upstream mines began collapsing, leaving anthracite coal stockpiles stranded and thousands jobless.

Industry pivoted from appeals to concrete proposals.

In early December ferrochrome producers, backed by industry bodies, tabled a “no-subsidy” emergency plan aimed at keeping smelters running while a longer-term pricing arrangement was finalised.

As a result, Eskom threw a lifeline to the country’s last operational smelters by applying for a temporary tariff discount which eased the immediate threat of mass retrenchments.

Government and Eskom also bought into industry’s long-term proposal: a gutsy scheme to restart idle coal mines and power station boilers to create a ring-fenced baseload supply for energy-intensive industry.

The intent is to provide industry with a competitive tariff that requires no subsidies from the state.

Smelters will, however, be forced to recommence retrenchment plans should no firm solution emerge by February.

Progress in the new year will reveal how much political will is truly behind saving the industry and the hundreds of thousands of jobs it supports.