Indonesia Deficit Aluminum 750,000 Tons, Men Of The Minister Of Energy And Mineral Resources: Government Encourages Inalum

Illustration (Photo: Doc. ANTARA)

JAKARTA - Special Staff to the Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources for the Acceleration of Mineral and Coal Governance, Irwandy Arif, revealed new facts regarding the bauxite commodity in Indonesia.

It is known, if currently Indonesia experiences an aluminium deficit of 750,000 tons.

"Indeed, every commodity has its own characteristics and challenges its own opportunities. So, our bauxite in Indonesia can be through refinery to alumina and alumina through smelter to aluminum. Indonesia has a deficit of 750,000 tons of aluminum," said Irwandy in the Mining Zone quoted Tuesday, June 25.

According to Irwandy, this lack of aluminum must be patched immediately. For this reason, the government continues to encourage PT Indonesia Asahan Aluminum (Inalum) to continue to increase its aluminum production capacity.

Irwandy emphasized that Inalum plans to increase its capacity from 250,000 tons per year to 600,000 per year.

Apart from Inalum, continued Irwandy, currently there is a company in North Kalimantan that will set up a smelter to process alumina into aluminum with a capacity of 500,000 tons per year.

"We hope that this deficit can be quite large from aluminum," continued Irwandy.

Furthermore, Irwandy added, actually there are 12 bauxite smelters that are planned to be built to strengthen the bauxite processing industry.

However, so far only 4 have started operating and produced alumina to be processed into aluminum.

While the remaining 8 are only 1 project showing development progress.

"Other seven, such as the complaint of the Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources, that the progress reported reached 30 to 50 percent but it turned out that in the field it was not like that. It was only in the form of a field," concluded Irwandy.