Bukit Asam to raise its coal production
Bukit Asam to raise its coal production
JAKARTA (JP): PT Bukit Asam, the state-owned coal mining
company, will spend about Rp 70 billion (US$29.2 million) to
boost its coal production from 9.07 million tons to 12.5 million
tons a year, a company executive said.
Production director Tommy Isnutomo said yesterday the
expansion would start next month.
He said production would be increased in two stages and the
firm would be able to produce 11.42 million tons by the end of
the year.
Tommy did not say when the company would start producing 12.5
million tons a year at its mining concession in the South Sumatra
city of Tanjung Enim. It has a coal deposit of more than 5.5
billion tons.
Due to an encouraging market outlook many local and foreign
investors wanted to help finance the expansion project, he said.
"But we'll do it alone by securing a loan from the state-owned
Bank Dagang Negara," he said in Bandar Lampung, reported Antara.
He did not give details of the loan.
He said PT Bukit Asam would continue to explore in South
Sumatra. The area is believed to be rich in coal.
R.A. Sunardi, PT Bukit Asam's president, said his company
would increase its sales on local and global markets.
On the domestic market, the company annually sells more than
one million tons of coal to cement industries, about one million
tons to South Sumatra's coal-fired Bukit Asam power plant and
more than five million tons to West Java's coal-fired Suralaya
power plant.
The company's exports are 2.5 million tons a year to four
Asian countries -- Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan and the Philippines.
On May 2, the firm won a new contract to export coal to the
Philippine National Oil Coal Corporation Company.
It would be exported in increasing amounts, he said. In the
first few years, Bukit Asam will export 120,000 tons. It will
increase to 250,000 tons a year and finally 850,000 tons by the
year 2002.
He said his company had secured two contracts to supply coal
to two big Japanese companies -- Mitsubishi Oil and Nisso Iwai --
this year.
"Other companies from Thailand, the Philippines and Taiwan are
interested in buying our coal," he said.
Tommy said that to facilitate exports the company was building
a coal port in Tanjung Api-api, South Sumatra, with a capacity of
20 million tons a year.
He said the port would be bigger than Lampung's Tarahan port
which had a capacity of 12 million tons.
He said the company, which lost Rp 7 billion recently in a
fire at its conveyor belt at Tarahan's port, would also build a
70-kilometer railway from Kertapati to Tanjung Api-api port.
(bnt)