Column: In search of the elusive green nickel premium
Just about every Western producer will tell you metal produced to higher environmental and social standards should command a premium.
Indonesia expects to have 29 nickel smelters operating by 2022, with total annual input capacity of nearly 70 million tonnes, a mining ministry official said on Friday, in a downward revision of a November projection of ore refining capacity.
Yunus Saefulhak, minerals director at the country’s energy and mineral resources ministry, scaled back his estimate of 91 million tonnes of input capacity at 37 operating smelters in 2021 made last month.
“After we evaluated, some are showing very slow progress,” Saefulhalk told reporters. “If they can complete construction in 2022, we consider those as a bonus.”
Eleven of the 29 smelters are already in operation, with annual input capacity of nearly 27 million tonnes.
The government also revised down its projection for bauxite smelters to nine, from 11 previously.
(By Wilda Asmarini and Fransiska Nangoy; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
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