Vale Maintains 2024 Nickel Production at 70,800 Tons

Nickel illustration (photo: dock. Antara)

JAKARTA - PT Vale Indonesia Tbk (INCO) maintains its nickel production target in 2024 of 70,800 metric tons of matte nickel. This figure only increases slightly from the 2022 target of 70,000 MT.

INCO's matte nickel production in the third quarter of 2023 was 17,953, while production for the 9 months of 2023 reached 51,644. INCO also recorded matte nickel sales in the third quarter of 17,214, while sales for the 9 months of 2023 were recorded at 44,347.

Chief Financial Officer of Vale Indonesia, Bernardus Irmanto, said that the decision to maintain this production target was due to maintenance of production equipment in 2024.

"Regarding the production level at 70,800 MT. There are many factors to determine production, one of which is the level of equipment maintenance compared to the duration of equipment maintenance in 2024," he said at the Public Expose Live Press Conference quoted on Thursday, November 30.

Bernardus explained, throughout 2024, the number of days used to carry out equipment maintenance will be longer, affecting the availability of equipment in factories used for production, which will reduce production results.

The next reason, continued Bernardus, is the quality of nickel in the Vale Indonesia mining area, which along with increasingly high nickel levels also has an impact on the size of nickel production in the region.

"If it is normalized, we have the opportunity for higher production. But taking into account the nickel grade and all existing chemistry and the availability of our equipment next year, the visible production level is 70 thousand," explained Bernardus.

Bernardus also confirmed that in the coming year, vale production will no longer be limited to 70 thousand tons but will continue to be increased by adjusting the availability of equipment. In this way, he said, the production of nickel matte and ore produced will be better.

"We are trying to optimize equipment maintenance so that in the following years equipment availability and utilization will be even higher and we are trying to get ore or ore with better chemistry and grade and can produce even better production," he concluded.