Freeport studying feasibility to build RI?s biggest copper smelter

PT Freeport Indonesia, a unit of US mining giant Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold, is conducting feasibility study to build a copper smelter in Indonesia in a bid to fulfill its domestic processing obligations, The Jakarta Globe reported Thursday.

The smelter project is earmarked to be bigger than an existing copper plant in Gresik, East Java.

Established in1996, PT Smelting is currently the only copper smelting and refining plant in operation in the country and can produce 300,000 metric tons of copper cathode annually. Freeport Indonesia has a 25 percent stake in PT Smelting.

Daisy Primayanti, a spokeswoman for Freeport Indonesia, told reporters on Wednesday that the company was participating in a feasibility study for a new smelting, along with state-owned miner Aneka Tambang, or Antam, and state-owned fertilizer producer Petrokimia Gresik.

Daisy declined to mention the size of the investment, saying it was still in the feasibility study stage.

?It will he bigger than the PT Smelting smelter,? she added. According to PT Smelting?s website, the plant in Gresik cost $500 million to build in the 1990s.

Another company, Indosmelt, is spending $1.5 billion to build its own copper and gold smelter, which is set to be completed in 2017 with an annual capacity of up to 120,000 tons of copper cathode.

Currently only 40 percent of Freeport?s copper concentrate is processed at the PT Smelting facility. (*)