The State-Owned Enterprises (SOE) Ministry’s undersecretary for mining, strategic industries and media affairs, Fajar Harry Sampurno, said the Environment and Forestry Ministry would issue a regulation stipulating that mineral waste such as slags resulting from processing nickel and copper ores could be used as raw material for the production of bricks, asphalt, concrete and cement.

Mineral waste like copper and nickel slags are categorized as hazardous and toxic waste (B3), requiring special handling. The Environment and Forestry Ministry should therefore issue a regulation for using such mineral waste in the production of materials of economic value.

“We will have many smelters in the future that will produce millions of tons of mineral slag. Hence, we need to come up with a way to turn it into useable products, such as for roads and building materials,” Fajar told reporters following a coordinating meeting at the Office of the Coordinating Economic Minister on Tuesday.

The meeting, led by Coordinating Economic Minister Darmin Nasution and attended by senior officials from the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry, the Environment and Forestry Ministry, the SOE Ministry and the Industry Ministry, discussed a number of alternatives for using mineral slags.

Fajar said the mining firms or smelter operators would be the parties to process the slags. At present, Fajar said, mineral slags were mostly hoarded by the miners.

Dozens of mineral smelters are under construction as part of the government’s program to develop the country’s downstream mining industry. Copper and nickel miners should locally have their own smelters or cooperate with other smelting companies to process their output by 2022, when exports of unprocessed mineral products are to be totally banned. By that time, Indonesia should have 57 smelters, which would produce much mineral waste.

Local copper smelter and refinery PT Smelting, which processes copper concentrate into copper cathode at its plant in Gresik, East Java, produces 655,000 tons of copper slag a year. The slag is used as raw material for the production of cement and concrete.

Harjanto, the Industry Ministry’s metal, machinery, transportation equipment and electronic industries director general, concurred that mineral slag could be used for construction materials and as a road hardener.

“We don’t have a road map [on the utilization of slags] yet, but we still see room to absorb it as one of the raw materials for industry, especially knowing that there will be many smelters in the future,” he said.

Harjanto said the volume of nickel slag, which at present totaled only 20 million tons a year, would increase sharply within the next few years when all the smelters currently under construction start operating.

The government expects the construction of 31 smelters to be completed by 2021. As of December 2018, 27 smelters are operating, 17 of which are nickel smelters.

In 2019, the Industry Ministry expects two more smelters to start operating. They are PT Aneka Tambang’s (Antam) Tanjung Buli nickel smelter in East Halmahera, which is set to start operating in June, and PT Wanatiara Persada’s nickel smelter in South Halmahera, which is set to launch by year-end.

The ministry expects to see more smelters launch operations next year, as 2021 is the deadline for smelter operations. Mining firms that do not have their products processed in smelters by then face government sanctions.

Five miners were punished earlier this year in the form of a temporary revocation of their export permits for their lack of commitment to build smelters. They are PT Surya Saga Utama, PT Genba Multi Mineral, PT Modern Cahaya Makmur, PT Lobindo Nusa Persada and PT Integra Mining Nusantara.

In addition, bauxite producer PT Gunung Bintan Abadi (GBA) in Riau lost its export permit for failing to meet its commitment to build a smelter.

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