JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesia’s Anugrah Neo Energy Materials and China’s Gotion Indonesia Materials have agreed to build a high-pressure acid leaching (HPAL) plant to produce materials used in batteries for electric vehicles, Indonesia’s industry ministry said.
The HPAL plant will be built on Sulawesi Island with a production capacity of 120,000 tons of nickel in mixed hydroxide precipitate per year as Indonesia boosts investment into high value-add processing of nickel, the ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.
Indonesia has successfully attracted massive investment into domestic nickel processing following its ore export ban policy, but most investment so far has gone into production of nickel pig iron.
The export value of nickel could increase by 19 times when processed into battery materials, Industry Minister Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita said in the statement.
“Therefore, the government continues to support the growth of domestic industry especially in downstream mineral resources and development of EVs,” he said, referring to electric vehicles.
The investment by Anugrah and Gotion Indonesia, a unit of China’s battery manufacturer Gotion High-tech Co Ltd, would follow an investment by Indonesia’s Mitra Murni Perkasa that broke ground this week to develop a smelter in East Kalimantan to produce 27,000 tonnes of nickel matte per year.
(This story has been corrected to say ‘smelter’ in East Kalimantan, and not an HPAL plant, in paragraph 6)
(Reporting by Stefanno Sulaiman; Writing by Fransiska Nangoy; Editing by Kanupriya Kapoor)