Semen Gresik plans power plant tender

JAKARTA (JP): Publicly listed cement producer PT Semen Gresik plans to tender the management of its 50 megawatt power plant in South Sulawesi to supply electricity to its subsidiary PT Semen Tonasa's new cement plant.

A senior executive of Semen Gresik, Moeharam, said yesterday that his company was mulling over extending the plant's management to the state electricity company PT Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN) or to its current contractors from China.

"We expect to know the results of the tender by March this year," Moeharam said in his presentation to fund managers here.

The 50 megawatt power plant, to supply electricity to Tonasa's fourth production unit, is only operating at 15 megawatts.

"The contractors are sending an engineering team at the end of this month, and we expect the problem to be solved by the middle of this year," Moeharam said.

Electricity from PLN and rented generators is now supplementing the power supply to the fourth production unit.

"We believe that this electricity supply will be sufficient to let Tonasa IV operate at between 60 percent and 70 percent of capacity until repairs are completed," he said.

The fourth unit, which started commercial production last November, can produce up to 2.3 million tons of cement yearly. But it needs 50 megawatts of power to operate at full capacity.

If power supplies remain short, the company will lose about 300,000 tons of cement output this year.

Thus, the company's consolidated output this year may be lower than its initial estimate of 10.95 million tons, up from 9.48 million tons last year.

This year's estimated output is expected to consist of 4.47 million tons of cement from Semen Gresik's plants in East Java, 3.32 million tons from PT Semen Padang's plants in West Sumatra and 3.16 million tons from Semen Tonasa's plants. (rid)