After nickel Indonesia s copper smelting industry is now attracting investors

JAKARTA - Indonesia has attracted investments of more than US$80 billion (S$102.5 billion) in the past decade into its nickel smelting plants. With global demand for copper rising, the country is fast becoming a key player in the copper smelting industry too.

Indonesia has only four copper smelters compared to more than 50 nickel smelters, with these nickel plants built in the main with investor money from China.

There is just one electric vehicle (EV) battery production facility in West Java province, tied to the huge expansion of the nickel industry.

A second EV battery plant also in West Java, being built by China’s CATL – the world’s largest EV battery maker – will be completed in 2026, with a production capacity of 15 gigawatts, which could generate enough batteries to power 250,000 EVs.

In the copper industry, Indonesia has attracted more than US$9 billion worth of investments in the last few years, including the entry of PT Freeport Indonesia with a massive copper refining facility in East Java province and PT Amman Mineral’s new smelter in West Nusa Tenggara province. PT Freeport Indonesia is majority-owned by the Indonesian government with US commodity giant Freeport-McMoRan as a significant minority shareholder, while PT Amman is a private company partly owned by local tycoon Anthoni Salim.

The other two earlier copper smelters were built by local company PT Batutua Tembaga Raya, which began commercial operations in 2018, and PT Smelting, a joint venture between Mitsubishi Materials Corporation and PT Freeport Indonesia, which has been around since the 1990s.

Investor interest in copper ore processing plants is picking up, analysts and industrialists say, helped in part by the same surge in EVs. Copper content in each EV battery pack is typically about 10 per cent, or weighing about 80 kg, for a mid-size