Sucofindo-KIER to produce CUPO in 2014

By Hiski Darmayana

PT Sucofindo and research institution of South Korea, Korea Institute of Energy Resource (KIER) will produce Coal Upgraded by Palm Oil (CUPO) - a mix of palm oil residue and low rank coal - next year.

"In this cooperation, Sucofindo will facilitate the feasibility study to build factory and supervise the technology implementation, while KIER will provide the technology," Director of Commercial III of Sucofindo Sufrin Hannan told Petromindo.

Sufrin said the factory will be built in early 2014 with initial capacity 6 million tons of CUPO per year. South Sumatra was chosen as the factory site because there is abundant low rank coal and CPO in the region.

South Korea will import the CUPO to supply their coal-fired power plants. "Our total power plants capacity is 8,000 gigawatt and 25% of all power plants consume coal," President of KIER Jooho Whang said.

Editing by Tri Subhki Rakhmatullah‪