The government has set a target of building 17 mineral processing factories or smelters throughout 2023. The construction of these dozens of smelters is aimed at supporting the mineral mining commodity downstream program which started for the first time through a nickel ore export ban policy in January 2020. Director General of Mineral and Coal at the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, Ridwan Djamaluddin, said that the government is currently still prioritizing the construction of nickel smelters.

"We plan to have 17 new smelters in 2023, most of them nickel smelters," said Ridwan in a press conference: 2022 Mineral and Coal Subsector Achievements and 2023 Work Program, Tuesday (31/1). Ridwan guaranteed that the government would strictly supervise the construction of 17 new smelters so they could be built before the turn of the year. In his presentation, he said that five mineral smelters would be built by 2022. This figure was below the initial target of seven smelters.

The Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources is also targeting the construction of 12 bauxite smelters as downstream support facilities which are set to commence in June this year. As of this January, there were only four existing smelters with a total input capacity of 13.88 million tons of bauxite which produced 4.3 million tons of alumina output. The four smelters are owned by PT Indonesia Chemical Alumina, PT Well Harvest Winning Alumina Refinery (WHW), and one WHW expansion smelter unit. Apart from that, domestic bauxite production is also refined by the smelter owned by PT Bintan Alumina Indonesia. "We are increasing the tightening because in 2023 all smelters must be completed. We will continue to tighten supervision of the obligation to build smelters for downstream," said Ridwan.

Source: https://katadata.co.id/lonaolavia/berita/63d924f02dd10/pemerintah-incar-pembangunan-17-smelter-mineral-pada-2023