With apologies for the late arrival of yesterday's Daily. Happy Independence Day!

Mozambique talks constantly about industrialisation. Much of that talk happens in conferences, speeches and investment forums, where the word can become an ambition more than an economic reality. The case of ETG Steel Solutions and Falcon Steel is different.

Here is a company manufacturing steel products in the Beluluane Free Trade Zone, close to Maputo, and selling them into South Africa and the wider regional market. Falcon Steel, owned by ETG, markets products manufactured by ETG Steel Solutions in Mozambique, including pipes, tubes, roofing, steel sections and other products used in construction, mining, water, sewerage, agriculture and manufacturing. Its own promotional material makes the South African market central to the business, stressing that Beluluane is less than 550km from Johannesburg.

That is exactly what Mozambique should want from an industrial zone. It is also the kind of opportunity we discussed recently in relation to the N4 corridor. Mozambique should not only serve as a route for South African trade through Maputo port. It should use the corridor, its ports, power and industrial parks to capture more value inside the domestic economy.

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The details matter, however. It appears that while some of the steel coil used by ETG in Mozambique is imported from South Africa, more is imported from China, before being processed at Beluluane and then exported as pipes and tubes to South Africa.

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That makes this a more complicated test of regional industrialisation. It is not simply South African steel going to Mozambique and returning with value added. It is imported steel being transformed in Mozambique, then entering the South African market as a Mozambican-made product. If the processing meets the rules, that is how an industrial zone is supposed to work. But it also explains why South African producers are pushing back.