Indonesia's Bakrie Group seeks nickel mine, partners up for $9 billion EV project

By Stefanno Sulaiman

JAKARTA – Indonesian conglomerate Bakrie & Brothers is trying to purchase a nickel mine within the resource-rich island of Sulawesi to provide a deliberate built-in industrial park to supply electrical car batteries, an government mentioned on Friday.

Often known as the Bakrie Group, which has pursuits in coal mining, media and property, the conglomerate launched a consortium final month with Chinese language power agency Envision and world commodity large Glencore to discover funding into an industrial park for the worldwide nickel provide chain.

The corporate’s chief government Anindya Bakrie instructed a discussion board on the sidelines of the World Financial Discussion board in Davos this week the deliberate 2,000-hectare (almost 5,000 acres) park will want $9 billion value of investments for the whole lot from nickel smelting to manufacturing batteries.

Gilarsi W. Setijono, chief government of Bakrie Group’s EV distributor unit PT VKTR Teknologi Mobilitas, mentioned the Indonesian firm plans to accumulate a nickel mine in Central or Southeast Sulawesi to provide the park.

“[The mine will] have sufficient reserves for round 140 Gigawatt-hours (of batteries) within the subsequent 25 years,” he instructed reporters, with out disclosing additional particulars.

The consortium, referred to as Indo-pacific Internet-zero Battery-materials Consortium (INBC), has set a goal to start out producing nickel-based precusors – used to make EV batteries – by 2026, with an annual capability equal to 120 GWh to be bought to Britain and European markets, Gilarsi mentioned.

It additionally goals to supply 20 GWh value of EV batteries per yr by 2028 for each home and export markets, he mentioned.

The consortium will launch a pre-feasibility examine in March and agency up every firm’s funding afterwards, Gilarsi mentioned, noting that Bakrie Group hopes to turn out to be a controlling stakeholder.

Individually, Bakrie’s VTKR plans to launch a $60 million preliminary public providing within the first half of 2023 to spend money on its personal EV manufacturing, Gilarsi mentioned.

Indonesia is eager capitalise on its wealthy nickel reserves to develop battery and EV industries. As soon as a significant exporter of nickel ore, it stopped outbound shipments of the uncooked materials in 2020 to ensure buyers have sufficient for home processing.

Envision and Glencore didn't instantly reply to request for feedback.

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