Three Chinese firms to invest $8.6b in mineral processing in Indonesia
Friday, August 31 2012 - 12:55 AM WIB
According to the plan, Beijing Shuang Zhong Li Investment Management Co. Ltd. will invest around $7.1 billion until 2020 to build an alumina refinery, an aluminum smelter and 1,250 megawatts supporting power plants in Riau or West Kalimantan.
The refinery; expected to produce 1.8 million tons of alumina per year, is expected to start operation in 2015, while the smelter, expected to produce 600,000 tons of ingots a year, is slated to start service in 2018.
Meanwhile, Oriental Mining and Minerals Resources Co. Ltd. and Rui Tong Investment Co. Ltd. will spend $1.5 billion until 2019 to build a plant in West Java to process iron sand into direct reduced iron. The plant, expected to begin operation in 2016, will have the annual capacity to produce 6 million tons of direct reduced iron used for steel smelting and iron casting, among other things.
The commitment was marked by two memorandums of understanding inked by the Industry Ministry?s Director General for manufacturing-based industry; Panggah Susanto, and representatives of the Chinese firms on Thursday.
?We expect the planned investments will contribute to our economic growth by reducing our dependence on imported products and strengthening the structure of our metals industry through integration of the upstream and downstream sectors," Industry Minister MS Hidayat said during the signing ceremony.(*)