Freeport Indonesia Resumes Copper Concentrate Production, But Still Below Capacity

By I Made Sentana

JAKARTA--The Indonesian unit of Freeport-McMoRan Inc. has resumed copper concentrate production after workers at the smelter in East Java ended a strike earlier this month, but production remains well below normal levels.

"Our [current] production is not that big, only to match the processing capacity of the Gersik smelter, which is only 40% of our normal production of 160,000 metric tons a day," PT Freeport Indonesia

spokesman Riza Pratama said Wednesday. Mr. Pratama said the smelter is still running below its capacity.

Mr. Pratama didn't say when the company will increase production as it is still negotiating with the government over the future of the company's operations. He said the talks are moving in a good direction.

Last month, Arizona-based Freeport-McMoRan threatened to take Indonesia to arbitration, saying new rules the country imposed on miners in January violated the terms of an operating agreement struck in 1991 that runs through 2021.

The rules are part of a broad effort to gather more revenue from the mining sector. Under the rules, Freeport is banned from exporting a form of unrefined copper until it agrees to new operating rights that would eventually force it to cede control of Grasberg, the second-largest copper mine in the world, to Indonesian entities.

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 22, 2017 01:14 ET (05:14 GMT)

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