PTBA acquires plantation firm

IDX-listed coal giant PT Bukit Asam Tbk (PTBA) said on Tuesday that through subsidiary PT Bukit Multi Investama, it has acquired 100 percent of PT Bumi Sawindo Permai (BSP), which operates a 8,346 hectares oil palm plantation located within PTBA?s Banko concession in Tanjung Enim, South Sumatra.

PTBA said BSP also operates a 45-ton per hour fresh fruit bunch of palm oil processing plant in the area and a 5 MW biomass power plant.

The company added that the plantation concession holds coal reserves estimated at 580 million tons, of the total PTBA reserves of 1.99 billion tons.

The coal reserves from the plantation concession would be useful to add to the fuel feed for a number of mine-mouth power plants to be developed by the company, PTBA said.

It pointed out as an example to the 2x620 MW Banko Tengah coal-fired power plant (Sumsel 8) to be developed by subsidiary PT Huadian Bukit Asam Power, which will require about 5.4 million tons of coal supply per year. The plan is projected to be in operation in 2017-2018.

Editing by Reiner Simanjuntak