Mitsubishi Materials Stops Indonesian Copper Smelting

Mitsubishi Materials announced on Wednesday the firm stopped Indonesian copper smelting subsidiary, PT Smelting’s Gresik Gases Indonesia temporally. The firm said the oxygen supply facility was down at smelting process and the recovery could take 2 months. The firm expects the output reduction of electrolytic copper is 52,000 tonnes and the outage could reduce the supply by more than 31,000 tonnes for Mitsubishi Materials in line with the 60% interest in the subsidiary. Mitsubishi Materials keeps the financial target for the year ending March 2007 despite of the 3 billion yen of loss. Mitsubishi Materials controls 60.5% of PT Smelting with 25% share by Freeport Indonesia, 9.5% by Mitsubishi Corporation and 5% by Nippon Mining & Metals. PT Smelting expected the electrolytic copper sales should be 250,000 tonnes for the year after the expansion to 275,000 tonnes from 250,000 tonnes in the first half year. With the temporally shut down, PT Smelting considers force majeure for copper concentrate supplier, Freeport’s Grasberg mine and makers of electric wire and copper tube in Indonesia, Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. Mitsubishi Materials has annual 735,000 tonnes of electrolytic copper output capacity including Naoshima smelter and refinery with 230,000 tonnes of capacity in Kagawa, Onahama smelting and refining with 230,000 tonnes of output capacity in Fukushima and PT Smelting with 275,000 tonnes. The equity copper is around 51% for the interest with 49.29% in Onahama and 60.5% in PT Smelting.