Operating June 2024, Here Are Some Facts About Freeport's Smelter

Smelter illustration (photo: between)

PT Freeport Indonesia is currently completing its second copper smelter in the JIIPE Special Economic Zone (SEZ), Gresik, East Java.

Vice President Director of PT Freeport Indonesia Jenpino Ngabdi said the smelter construction went smoothly and according to the target.

"The current smelter construction progress is in accordance with the plan and is ready to operate in June 2024. The PTFI smelter will start producing in August 2024 and then ramp up will reach full capacity at the end of December 2024," said Jenpino in an official statement, Friday, March 1.

This project is PTFI's second smelter. The first smelter was built in 1996 and managed by PT Smelting with an investment value of up to US$3.1 billion or equivalent to Rp48 trillion as of the end of December 2023.

This smelter uses double flash smelting and converting smelter hydrometallurgy PMR technology and can produce copper cathodes, gold, pure silver bars and Platinum Group Metals (PGM). While the resulting byproducts are sulfate, terak, gypsum and lead.

The copper smelter with the largest Design Single Line in the world will be able to purify the copper concentrate with a production capacity of 1.7 million tons and produce copper cathodes of up to 600,000 tons per year.

The pre-commissioning and commissioning process will be carried out until the end of May 2024 and will start operating in June 20204 with the first production in August of the same year. Meanwhile, the increase in production to full operations is planned for the end of 2024.

Then the workforce absorbed in the smelter construction was 34,000 workers with a composition of 99 percent coming from Indonesia with 56 percent of them coming from East Java.