Talenta to build anode slime smelter

A company called PT Talenta Bumi Nusantara plans to develop a domestic smelter to refine anode slime produced by copper cathode smelting company PT Smelting, Investor Daily reported on Thursday.

The paper quoted Director General of Mineral and Coal R. Sukhyar as saying that Talenta has expressed its plan to develop the smelter in Gresik, East Java, where Smelting is also located.

Talenta hopes to be able to obtain the anode slime raw material from PT Smelting, which produced about 2,000 tons of the material, a by-product of copper cathode production, each year.

IDX-listed PT Aneka Tambang has previously signed an MoU with Smelting for the latter to supply about 500 tons of anode slime per year to the former?s planned smelter facility.

Talenta?s planned smelter will also have a capacity to process 500 tons per year of anode slime.

The government has been pushing for the development of anode slime smelter at home as starting 2017, non-refined anode slime could no longer be exported. (*)