Berita

JAKARTA. Solway Investment Group (SIG), a holding company from Russia is ready to donate US$ 3 billion to build nickel ore smelter in North Maluku as its seriousness in developing nickel business in Indonesia.

SIG commitment to build the smelter is good news for Indonesian mining. But, the most important thing is that this commitment could immediately be realized in real investment.

Law (UU) No. 4, 2009 regarding Mineral and Coal Mining brings the spirit of mining product’s added value in domestic. The holder of contract of work which already in operation is obliged to do domestic purification at least 5 (five) year since the Law No. 4, 2009 has been stipulated. The implementation regulation in a form of Minister of EMR’s Regulation draft concerning the Added Value Improvement of Mineral and Coal is being processed.

President Bantry Corporation, partner tunggal and SIG consultant in press conference in Grand Hyatt Hotel, Thursday night (2/17) affirmed the SIG commitment, “We’ll process nickel ore independently, and that is why we will build smelter”.

In detail, the investment of US$ 3 billion are US$ 900 million for smelter building investment, US$ 800 million for power plant, and the rest is used to build other supporting infrastructures such as transportation infrastructure; harbor and highway, and communication infrastructure. Initial production of this processing is targeted reaching 50 million metric ton by 2014 and increase 80 million metric ton per year by 2016.

SIG consists of company diversification with its core business is in mining, non-ferrous metals, chemist, cement, and real estate. This group‘s portfolio is in Uni-Soviet states, Central Europe, East Europe, Latin America and Australasia. Some processing projects are Solway Andes in Peru, poly-metallic exploration project in Laos and Kuril Geo Project in Russia.

The Project in Indonesia is called Aquila Nickel Project in Halmahera, which is in feasibility study and is hoped this stage will finish in the second quarter of 2012 for then need additional time 25-30 months to finish the license, engineering design and construction. Nickel resource owned is about 114 million ton; nickel content 1, 7 %, and good ratio SiO2/MgO.

This project is planned having production capacity 38.000 ton nickel in form of ferronickel with recovery rate is about 90 %, equal to industry average. HPAL process used also has lower content than cut-off grade (cog). Based on energy supply point of view, SIG also has specialty because of having coal power plant generator of IGCC technology which is supplied from coal mining concession owned by SIG in West Papua Province. (AK)