Smelting factory in Gresik, East Java – Jubi’s doc
Jakarta, Jubi/CNN Indonesia – PT Freeport Indonesia will allocate US$ 2.3 billion or 28.75 trillion rupiahs to build a smelter required by the Indonesian government.
“Freeport wants to finance the construction of smelter. It will become a legal entity in this project,” the Director General of Mining and Coal Department of Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry, R. Sukhyar in Jakarta on Tuesday (24/02/2015).
Sukhyar said Freeport will build a national copper smelter at Gresik, East Java by renting a land area of 80 hectares from PT. Petrokimia Gresik.
The US-based company signed a Memorandum of Understanding with PT. Petrokimia in last January. “We will ask Freeport to present it on Friday,” he said.
The national copper smelter will have a capacity to accommodate two tones of copper concentrates. Further Sukhyar explained it was part of the implementation of Mining and Coal Law No. 4/2009 in order to improve the value of national mineral commodities. In addition, it also will increase the production value of processing concentrates done by the PT. Smelting that previously able to accommodate 1.2 tones of copper concentrates.
“We also will build a smelter in Papua with a capacity of 900 thousand tones of copper concentrates,” he said.
About the agreement on the national copper smelter, four copper contracted companies namely PT Freeport Indonesia, PT Newmont Nusa Tenggara, PT Gorontalo Mineral and PT Kalimantan Surya Kencana agreed to sign the agreement since last year. With the certain financing agreement by Freeport, Sukhyar said the three other companies would supply the copper concentrates to the smelter.
“But we don’t have any information about how much concentrates would be supplied by the three companies,” he said. (*/Rom)
