INDONESIAN President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo inaugurated Amman Mineral Internasional’s 21 trillion rupiah (S$1.8 billion) copper smelter in the West Nusa Tenggara province on Monday (Sep 23) saying he wanted global customers to turn to Indonesia for copper products.
The smelter has an input capacity of 900,000 tonnes of copper concentrate per year. It is expected to start producing copper cathode at the end of the year, Amman said.
The smelter will be producing 220,000 tonnes of copper cathode, 18 tonnes of gold, 55 tonnes of silver, and 850,000 sulphuric acid by product, Jokowi said, without giving a timeframe.
Jokowi said processing the raw materials domestically is a way for South-east Asia’s largest economy to be predicated on production, instead of consumption as it is now.
“We also want global demand for copper products to be able to depend on Indonesia. Anything, be they cathode, cables… everything,” he said.
In an effort to attract investment into its metals processing industry and boost the value of its exports, the government started banning exports of copper concentrate from June for companies who do not build domestic smelter facilities.
Amman secured a permit in July to export copper concentrate, with the quota of 534,000 tonnes valid until Dec 31. REUTERS
