The team, inaugurated by the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources on Friday, August 21, 2026, has been tasked with negotiating definitive terms of engagement with a prospective strategic partner for the retooling and expansion of the Tema-based aluminium smelter.
Inaugurating the team, the Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, stressed the government’s commitment to revamping VALCO into an efficient, profitable and globally competitive enterprise while protecting Ghana’s strategic interests in the aluminium value chain.
He charged members of the team to conduct the negotiations transparently and diligently and ensure value for money.
The minister said VALCO remained a critical national asset that must not be allowed to collapse.
The negotiations are expected to assess prospective investors based on their technical capacity, financial strength, experience in smelter operations and commitment to long-term investment in Ghana’s aluminium industry.
The move comes as VALCO faces significant operational challenges, with its active cells falling from 127 in 2025 to about 90 as of August 2026.
The decline has been attributed to ageing equipment, power constraints and supply chain challenges.
The government has assured VALCO workers, stakeholders and the public that the modernisation exercise will not involve an outright privatisation of the company.
Instead, it intends to bring in a credible strategic partner who will provide capital for modernisation and retooling while helping to secure the long-term future of the company and its jobs.
The Negotiations Team comprises representatives from the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, the Ghana Integrated Aluminium Development Corporation (GIADEC), the Ministry of Finance, the Attorney-General’s Department and VALCO.
VALCO was established in 1964 as part of Ghana’s post-independence industrialisation agenda under President Kwame Nkrumah, with the smelter designed to utilise power from the Akosombo Dam to support an integrated aluminium industry.
The Tema smelter was designed to operate more than 200 pots with an annual production capacity of 200,000 tonnes. At its peak, VALCO was a major industrial employer and foreign exchange earner.
The government acquired 100% of VALCO’s shares in 2008 following the exit of Kaiser Aluminium. The company has since struggled with high and inconsistent power costs, ageing equipment and inadequate capital for major retooling.
Efforts to secure a strategic investor have been ongoing since 2022, when Cabinet approved GIADEC and VALCO’s request to pursue a strategic equity investor for the modernisation project.
A comprehensive technical and financial assessment conducted by KPMG in 2022 recommended equity investment as the most commercially viable option for reviving the smelter.
In November 2025, the government inaugurated a 12-member cross-sectoral committee to evaluate proposals from interested investors. The committee, which included representatives from VALCO, GIADEC and several government ministries, submitted its options analysis report on January 7, 2026.
GIADEC, established in 2018 to lead the development of Ghana’s integrated bauxite-to-aluminium value chain, has maintained that the government does not intend to sell VALCO outright.
Under the proposed arrangement, the government would cede a portion of its equity to a strategic investor in exchange for capital injection and the modernisation of the smelter.
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