Special deals, again?

South Africans will no doubt remember the ugly 2008 standoff between Standard Bank and BHP Billiton over whether Eskom should, in the midst of power shortages, honour a favourable metal-price-linked electricity supply deal with the diversified miner’s aluminium smelters in South Africa and Mozambique. Fast forward nearly ten years and the smelters are now owned by South32 and Eskom has a revamped supply agreement with the Mozal smelter, through which the currency and commodity risk has been transferred the resources company. However, the State-owned utility is now also long on product and is again actively hoping court energy-intensive business through the extension of incentivised tariffs.