INDUSTRY.co.id - Cilegon - President Director of PT Krakatau Steel Tbk, Mas Wigrantoro Roes Setiyadi inaugurated the operation of two factories in the framework of the 47th anniversary of the unit cokes oven plant from Blast Furnance Complex and slag grinding plant of PT Krakatau Cement Indonesia (KSI).

"With the commencement of the operation of cokes oven plant and slag grinding plant has led both plants to the commercial direction," said Mas Wigrantoro with the board of directors and commissioners of PT Krakatau Steel Tbk while reviewing the readiness of the two plants on Thursday (8/31/2017)

Mas Wigrantoro said cokes (cokes) resulting from coal processing is a steel fuser that other units need in the blast furnace complex, targeting the plant to be operational by early 2018 to produce 1.2 mt of hot metal.

Mas Wigrantoro expects the presence of blast furnace complex to achieve an efficiency of 58 US dollars per ton according to the initial target of development, but because the project is experiencing delays it aims independent consultants to calculate the real efficiency achievements.

Meanwhile, PT Krakatau Semen Indonesia is a joint venture of PT Krakatau Steel tbk and PT Semen Indonesia Tbk with a capacity of 750,000 tons of slag per year. KSI will utilize waste of PT Krakatau Posco and PT Krakatau Steel Tbk as raw material for cement making, said Mas Wigrantoro.

To support the loading and unloading activities of the factory, PT Krakatau Steel Tbk through its subsidiary PT Krakatau Bandar Samudera has built a dock with a capacity of 1.3 million tons per year of loading and unloading, bringing the total loading and unloading capacity in all KBS ports to 26.3 million tons per year.

Furthermore, Finance Director of KS, Tambok P. Setyawati, said the improvement of the world steel market made the company's financial performance towards a positive direction indicated by the smaller net loss of 87.5 million US dollars in the first half of 2016 to 56.7 million US dollars in the second semester 2017.

As well as the world steel prices such as steel sheet heat increase from 520 US dollars per ton to 629 US dollars per ton, improvement is also expected to occur in the subsidiaries, said Tambok.

Tambok said that the Hot Strip Mill (HSM) hot ton sheets machine overhaul program makes the company still lose money, as well as the Lebaran holiday that is laden with the delivery.

"We are targeting the performance to be positive in early 2018 as we begin to contribute to a number of factories currently in the stage of completion work," said Tambok.

Furthermore, Mas Wigrantoro said the company has bagged a contract to produce and deliver 200,000 tons of steel for the next 10 months for the construction of Jakarta-Cikampek II toll road, which is currently 14,353 tons.