In Indonesia Nickel is one of the major extracted minerals. Indonesia is among the world’s top five producers of nickel ore. Indonesia mines around 150,000 tons of Nickel annually, about 10% of global production. Nickel is produced in Soroako (North Sulawesi), Pomalaa (South Sulawesi), and the Maluku and Gebe islands, which have some largest reserves in the world.
PT Inco Indonesia, produces nickel in matte, an intermediate product, from lateritic ores in its integrated mining and processing facilities near Sorowako on the Island of Sulawesi; explores nickel deposits at Pomalaa in Southeast Sulawesi and at Bahudopi in Central Sulawesi. The company sells its products in the United States. As of December 31, 2008, it had a contract work area of 218,529 hectares. The company was founded in 1968 and is headquartered in Jakarta, Indonesia. PT International Nickel Indonesia Tbk operates as a subsidiary of Vale Inco Limited.
PT Aneka Tambang (PT Antam) has a mining operations on three ferronickel facilities which are located at Pomalaa, Southeast Sulawesi and North Maluku, have a nameplate capacity of between 22,000-24,000 tons of nickel per year. Detailed overview of operations is presented in ANTAM’s 2008 Annual Report. Rio Tinto is developing Nickel operations in Sulawesi – as it is presented in their Return to Nickel Brochure and press-release. The fact that Rio Tinto is accelerating its $2 billion project – shows the importance of mineral in Indonesian industry. It is supposed that the project is going to be producing about 46,000 tons of nickel a year. The operations are scheduled to start in 2014. And this month it was reported that Taiwan’s steel giant E United Group wants to develop Nickel reserves in Southeast Sulawesi (the regencies of Konawe Utara and Konawe Selatan) with estimated cost $600 million.
The following graph form PwC mineIndonesia 2008* 10th annual review of trends in the Indonesian mining industry shows that as to revenues Nickel is placed third, and as to production – second:
Top Indonesian Nickel producing companies are placed second and third as to their market capitalization (look at our previous post)
As to the Nickel trading – Alibaba.com lists 38 companies that are trading nickel from Indonesia, some of them looking for investors; HIMFR has 28 sales leads. For those interested I suggest to Google ‘buy nickel ore Indonesia’ – and you will find a lot….
So, here are some vital Nickel Web-links:
International Nickel Study Group
USGS Nickel Statistics and Information
Annual Report of Nickel Institute
JAPANESE INVOLVEMENT IN NICKEL MINING IN INDONESIA
Vladimir F. Kuznetsov, Director IR
Earthstone Group
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