TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Metal trade expo seeks to spur growth
Indometal, the international metal and steel trade fair for Southeast Asia, is expected to become a vehicle for local industry growth by promoting new technological advances, according to industry insiders
Change Size
I
ndometal, the international metal and steel trade fair for Southeast Asia, is expected to become a vehicle for local industry growth by promoting new technological advances, according to industry insiders.
According to Iben Rifa, director of Indonesian metallurgy product specialists PT Haltraco Sarana Mulia, last year's inaugural metal trade expo has become a much-awaited platform for bringing innovation to local industry.
'Such an event has been missing all this time; we don't have a vessel for the industry,' Iben told The Jakarta Post on the sidelines of a press conference on Wednesday.
The 2nd Indometal will be bigger, with 70 percent of the 300 exhibitors coming from abroad. The event will run from Dec. 11 to 13 at the Jakarta International Expo Kemayoran in Jakarta.
Iben said that trade exhibitors like himself should make use of the transfer of high technology to spur domestic production, adding that foreign investments needed to benefit local industries by providing opportunities for manufacturing value-added products.
'The government's industry-benefiting policies must be met with better knowledge of the industry, otherwise it will become a moot point,' said Iben.
In January, the government enforced a ban on all exports of unprocessed mineral materials as part of its effort to boost downstream industry in the country and to safeguard the materials for local industry.
'If industry players come to the expo with inquiries, they will be in a better position to utilize our natural resources. Thus, Indometal can become the facilitator of technology transfer in the country,' he added.
Achmad Safiun, chairman of the Association of Indonesian Metal Foundries (APLINDO), concurred with Iben, saying that the expo could be used to showcase technologies that have uses in the local metal-processing industry.
Achmad said that it was partly the fault of local industry players, who preferred to work with low-grade technology in order to push revenue margins.
For instance, he said that the high electrical costs of producing aluminum accounted for 48 percent of its market price. 'To process 2.2 million tons of aluminum, you need around 50 million kilowatts per hour (KWh). If energy costs are high, the end-product will also be high [expensive],' he said.
'It takes 260 megawatts (MW) of electricity to produce 250,000 tons of aluminum ingots. To pull down costs down we would need 300MW from cheap energy resources.'
As a workaround, Achmad said that there was the potential to develop water-based power stations that have generated more than 12,000 MW of electricity from the Mamberamo river in West Papua.
'If we 'own' the metal industry, everything will follow and the industry will grow with creativity,' he added.
According to Achmad, Indonesian aluminum is produced entirely by state-owned aluminum maker PT Indonesia Asahan Aluminium (Inalum), which has a capacity of 250,000 tons per year. The country, however, still relies on imports of half-finished goods to fulfill the annual demand of 800,000 tons.
'Inalum produces aluminum ingots, not [downstream products such as] alloy. We still have a shortage of 600,000 tons per year, which we import as alumina,' Achmad said, despite the fact that Indonesia was the sole manufacturer of aluminum in the ASEAN region.
