Major private Indonesian tin miner and smelter, PT Refined Bangka Tin (RBT), has announced plans to end all its tin operations and scrap its smelting and refining facility due to environmental concerns, Reuters reported yesterday.
Tomy Winata, the founder of RBT’s holding company, the Artha Graha Group, told Reuters: “All Indonesian shareholders and Singaporean partners have agreed to cease operation [sic] … The area will be made a conservation area. The refinery won’t be sold, but will be scrapped.” Winata added that the decision to close the smelter came following the company’s failure to meet “environmentally friendly” requirements.
Since 2012, RBT has consistently been one of the top exporting private Indonesian smelters with typical annual exports of 5,000 tonnes of refined tin and capacity of 2,000 tonnes per month. Despite exporting 2,408 tonnes of refined tin between January and April in 2015, declining tin prices and new regulation implemented in August caused the company’s refined tin output to decline to as little as 200 tonnes per month in the second half of the year.
