Papuan smelter costs $1m, ready by 2020

JAYAPURA. A smelter planned for Papua is estimated to cost US$1 million, will have a capacity of 900,000 tons per year, needs 54 months for construction and is to be operational by late 2020 at the latest.

"The energy and mineral resources minister's visit resulted in an agreement to build a smelter in Papua. The construction will use foreign funds while PT Freeport will supply the concentrates to be processed in the smelter," Papua Governor Lukas Enembe said on Tuesday in Jayapura.

The smelter will be built in the Poumako area in Timika, Mimika regency, in a 650-hectare plot of land. In addition to a smelter, the area will also be built into an industrial zone.

Meanwhile, Papua Mining Agency head Bangun Manurung said the project would need 50 megawatts (MW) of electricity: the smelter needs 10 MW while the refinery and utilities each need 20 MW.

"The smelter will not use electricity from the planned Urumka hydropower plant, which is still in the planning stage," said Bangun, who is also head of the smelter development team.

"We will use other technology for the smelter, which will use a continuous process so that the resulting heat can be used to generate electricity."

Bangun said the smelter would have a gas-fired power plant using GE technology while the smelter itself will use a technology developed by China ENFI Engineering CO. Ltd., a subsidiary of the Chinese nonferrous metal industry's Foreign Engineering and Construction Co. Ltd. The project will be financed by the Bank of China.

In addition to a gas-fired power plant, other facilities will include a copper smelter, a copper refinery, a gold and silver refinery, a sulfuric acid factory and an oxygen factory. (Nethy Dharma Somba)