INDUSTRY.co.id - Jakarta - Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources (ESDM) noted that investment in smelter development in Indonesia until October 2017 reached Rp88 trillion.

The investment consists of the construction of nickel smelter of Rp68 trillion and bauxite smelter of Rp20 trillion.

The investment has succeeded in building 13 nickel purification facilities with various products produced and has been able to purify domestic Nickel ore of 34 million tons of nickel ore. In Bauxite commodities, it processes 4.4 million tons of bauxite in the country and has been able to produce 700 thousand tons of alumina.

Director General of Minerals and Coal Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, Bambang Gatot Ariyono, said that from 15 refining facilities that have been built there are 2 nickel smelters that do not operate due to the economic factors resulting from increased operating costs (coke) and the weakening of mineral commodity prices in early 2017.

"The main cause of the non-operation of smelters using the Blast Furnace technology is the increase in coke prices from an average of 100 dollars per ton in 2015 to 200-300 dollars per ton since the end of 2016," Gatot said in a written statement on Thursday (28/12 / 2017).

After the issuance of PP 1 Year 2017 and its derivatives of ESDM Regulation No 5/2017 and ESDM Regulation no. 6/2017 which provides incentives for business actors who build refining facilities to sell low grade nickel ore can encourage entrepreneurs to seriously build new refining facilities or even encourage existing smelters to increase the capacity of existing refining facilities.

There are 11 new investing companies and 2 companies expanding with total investment to be invested US $ 4.3 billion with input capacity of 28 million tons of Nickel ore.

While in Bauxite commodities incentives to increase value added can encourage new investment to build 4 refining facilities amounting to 4 billion US dollars which will increase the ability to purify domestic bauxite of 13.7 million tons.

There are also thirteen companies that have built nickel smelter PT Vale Indonesia, PT Aneka Tambang (Pomala), PT Fajar Bhakti Lintas Nusantara, PT Sulawesi Mining Investment, PT Gebe Industry Nickel, PT Megah Surya Pertiwi and PT COR Industri Indonesia.

Furthermore, there are Heng Tai Yuan, Century Metalindo, Indonesia Guang Ching Nickel and Stainless Steel, Virtu Dragon, PT Surya Saga Utama (Blackspace), and PT Bintang Timur Steel.