PT BA increases sales of coal briquettes
Monday, October 23 2000 - 04:00 AM WIB
State coal miner PT Tambang Batubara Bukit Asam (PT BA)'s Gresik Coal Briquettes Development Project (P2B2 Gresik) has targeted to sell 6,500 tons of briquettes through its 47 distributors in Java.
P2B2 Gresik's head of marketing, Moch. Qohar Setianto, said he was optimistic that his party would be able to increase the volume of its briquettes sales to 6,500 tons from 4,800 tons last year, with an average price of Rp 350 per kilo.
"There are potentials to sell more briquettes to small-scaled businesses, we have just targeted some of them only. We will focus our briquette marketing to this segment of businesses," he said.
He noted that coal briquettes were not popular among households but were used widely by small-scaled businesses such as tofu producers, hatchery and coffee drying industry. The largest users had been hatchery industries.
. He expressed his optimism that coal briquettes would become increasingly popular among household users if the government altered altogether its fuel subsidies.
P2B2 Gresik has been producing since 1997. It has production capacity of 120,000 tons of briquettes per annum. However, because of the weak market demand, the plant has never run into its full capacity. It only produces 700 tons per months or 84,000 tons per annum. (*)