A New Chapter in Downstream Processing: Demanding Sovereignty for Indonesian AI Materials
The new chapter in Indonesia’s critical mineral downstreaming must be marked by the courage to leap from mere physical control to computational sovereignty.
06 Okt 2026 14:00 WIB · Artikel Opini
Kompas/Heryunanto
The government’s recently launched Strategic Investment Downstreaming Roadmap, worth US$618.1 billion by 2040, marks a new chapter for the national industry. As emphasized by the Ministry of Investment and Downstreaming/BKPM, the policy direction is now being accelerated toward the advanced processing phase, with a top priority on the electric vehicle (EV) battery supply chain.
This step deserves appreciation as a serious effort to shift from merely large-scale smelting based on tonnage to an industry focused on product quality and compliance with global standards.
However, amidst the wave of optimism for this new chapter, a fundamental question must be raised. Is building a physical battery cell factory sufficient to ensure the sovereignty of the national industry in the long term? Certainly not, if we merely act as an “assembly plant” that produces standard battery cells.
Without mastery of advanced materials engineering at the molecular scale, Indonesia risks falling into a new generation commodity trap, where physical manufacturing locations are relocated but remain dependent on licensing technology, high-value active ingredients, and chemical formulations from other countries.
While Indonesia is busy building physical downstream infrastructure, the landscape of science and the global manufacturing industry has undergone fundamental disruption. The main arena of competition is no longer based on the ability to extract or smelt mineral ores in smelter chimneys, but rather on the computational power that determines the formulation of future materials.
The advent of AI-driven material discovery, or the discovery of materials based on artificial intelligence and quantum computing, has broken down the efficiency barriers of conventional research. Scientific experiments that once took 10 to 20 years through trial and error can now be simulated in a matter of days.
Global AI platforms like Google DeepMind’s GNoME have predicted over 380,000 new thermodynamically stable crystal structures. Meanwhile, a collaboration between Microsoft and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) successfully screened 32 million candidate materials into a new lithium-efficient solid-state battery electrolyte in just one week.
The implications of this technological leap are stark for Indonesia’s Downstream Roadmap. When global algorithms are able to design alternative battery compositions, such as sodium-ion or lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, which are cheaper and no longer dependent on nickel or cobalt, the strategic value of our mineral reserves and the physical facilities we have invested hundreds of billions of dollars in are at risk of premature obsolescence.
Further downstreaming efforts should not stop at standard battery cell manufacturing. Producing battery cells does indeed increase added value compared to simply exporting NPI (nickel pig iron) or ferronickel. However, the greatest profit margins and control over technological sovereignty lie in the ability to formulate high-precision active materials for cathodes, anodes, and electrolytes.
Indonesia is at a crucial crossroads. We must not allow critical raw materials from the archipelago to be exported in semi-finished forms, only to be digitally processed by AI platforms from other countries, and then re-imported by Indonesia in the form of high-value economic formulations.
To ensure that the 2040 Downstreaming Roadmap truly leads Indonesia out of the middle-income trap, the government, along with universities and national industrial consortiums, must take three breakthrough steps.
The first step is to build a national informatics materials ecosystem. Indonesia must have an integrated database that records the physicochemical properties of local minerals. This database will serve as the raw material (training data) for the nation’s machine learning models to design specialty alloys, nanometer-scale sponges (Metal-Organic Frameworks/MOFs), and next-generation battery materials.
Second, a shift in investment toward precision manufacturing. Investment facilitation should no longer focus solely on extractive facilities but should also include technology transfer for powder metallurgy processing for 3D printing, semiconductor fabrication, and robotic labs integrated with computational research.
Third, the measurement of sovereignty based on intellectual property. The success indicators of Phase II Downstreaming should no longer be measured by the tonnage of smelting results or the number of battery cells assembled, but rather by how many material formulation patents and technology licenses are independently controlled.
A new chapter in the downstream processing of Indonesia’s critical minerals must be marked by the courage to leap from mere physical control to computational sovereignty. The future of global industrial competition is no longer determined by how deeply we excavate the earth’s crust, but rather by how intelligently we master the algorithms that design the future of the world’s materials.
Mirza Wibisono, Researcher at BRIN Bone and Dental Biomaterials Research Group, Composite and Biomaterials Research Center-BRIN
Writer:
Mirza WibisonoEditor:
Neli TrianaLanguage Editor:
Didik Durianto