ReforMiner States Copper Demand Will Rise Due to Renewable Energy and EVs

Founder of ReforMiner Institute, Pri Agung Rakhmanto, stated that copper demand will increase, driven by several sectors including infrastructure and electricity such as cables and transformers, the renewable new energy industry, and the automotive industry, particularly electric vehicles (EVs). “This will absorb the production of copper and processed copper (cathode) from copper smelters operating in Indonesia,” Pri Agung said in a statement received in Jakarta on Wednesday. He emphasised that this industrial ecosystem requires support and facilitation from the government to develop optimally. He hopes for investment ease in downstream sectors absorbing copper to optimise domestic copper production, thereby supporting national economic growth. Nevertheless, he appreciates the copper downstreaming steps that have been underway in Indonesia. This is because the value addition from exporting raw minerals to copper cathodes is already strong enough to improve Indonesia’s global trade balance in the future. “If the industrial ecosystem has not yet developed, the existing production will be more absorbed for export,” he said. Currently, Indonesia’s copper industry is dominated by several major mining companies with strategic projects. Among them are PT Freeport Indonesia, a member of the MIND ID group, PT Amman Mineral Internasional Tbk, and PT Merdeka Copper Gold Tbk. Each of these companies has different reserve sizes. For example, Freeport Indonesia reported that the latest exploration results show extractable copper reserves until 2041 have increased to 8 billion pounds, up from the previous estimate of 7 billion pounds. Meanwhile, PT Amman Mineral Nusa Tenggara recorded total mineral reserves of around 460 million tonnes until 2030. This increase occurred along with the start of the new mining phase, Phase 8, at the Batu Hijau Mine. On the other hand, PT Merdeka Copper Gold Tbk reported copper reserve growth through 2025 to 9.1 million tonnes, or a 6 percent increase. In terms of ore, copper ore reserves even surged 60 percent to 3.0 million tonnes. The size of these reserves is also supported by the presence of smelters that increase the added value of the copper commodity. Based on research from the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, the added value from copper smelters can reach around 1.74 times compared to concentrate raw materials. In the smelting sector, Indonesia already has several active smelters that form the backbone of downstreaming. The main facilities include those in Gresik, East Java, as well as a new smelter project in West Nusa Tenggara that strengthens domestic processing capacity. If the industrial ecosystem is successfully built in an integrated manner, he believes this commodity has the potential to become a new growth engine while increasing domestic economic added value.