The Indonesian private tin smelter, PT Refined Bangka Tin (RBT), has announced plans to resume production following a change of management, FastMarkets reported earlier today. In February this year it was announced that operations had ceased due to environmental concerns and that the company’s smelting and refining facility on Bangka Island would be scrapped.
Comments from FastMarkets sources suggest environmental concerns were only a part of the decision to halt operations and that internal disagreements between the company’s owners were a major component, with one trader commenting; “Within RBT itself there was a group fighting to keep it open and another to close,” The renewed tin operation will be managed by RBT owner, Robert Bono.
It is reported that RBT has an export permit for 12,000 tonnes of refined tin this year but is unlikely to reach this figure, with output expected to be roughly equal to what the company achieved prior to closure. Since 2012, RBT had 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. However, declining tin prices and new regulation implemented in August 2015 caused the company’s production to decline to as little as 200 tonnes per month in the second half of the year.
ITRI View: It is unclear what regulatory hurdles the company will face now that it plans to return to production. The company was also delisted as a registered LME brand in March this year and whether it will seek to re-register and how long this might take is also uncertain. However, RBT’s depleted refined tin stocks, which were sold off earlier this year, and a reported current shortage of tin concentrate in Indonesia should limit the impact of the company’s return to the market. Therefore we see no reason to adjust our current forecast for total Indonesian tin production in 2016 of just over 60,000 tonnes of refined metal.
