Govt to build metal smelting center in Bontang

The government will build a metal smelting center in Bontang, East Kalimantan as part of the economic growth acceleration master plan (MP3EI) for 2013-2025 period, Investor Daily reported on Saturday.

Tatang Sabaruddin, the director for program development at the director general of mineral and coal at the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry, said that Bontang was chosen as the metal smelting center because it had abundant resources such as gas and coal which could provide sufficient power supply.

?We hope that the plan to turn Bontang into a metal smelting plant could be realized in 2014 or 2015,? he said, adding that PT Nusantara Smelter had became the first company which had expressed interest to build a copper smelting plant in Bontang.

He said PT Nusantara Smelter, which was currently conducting a feasibility study, would process copper concentrates from PT Freeport Indonesia and PT Newmont Nusa Tenggara (NNT).

Freeport earlier said that the company was ready to process all of its copper concentrates to local smelters. The company currently has 42 percent of its concentrates processed at its partly owned smelting company PT Smelting Gresik in East Java. The company?s remaining concentrates are processed overseas.(*)