Timah invests US$50 million in downstream industries
Pangkalpinang (ANTARA News) - The management of state tin company PT. Timah
invested 50 million US dollars in the production of downstream products
including tin bars for the chemical industry, food industry, pharmaceutical
industries, and others.
"We have teamed up with China in the establishment of downstream industries.
Actually PT Timah has no technology for the production of downstream products
which are highly competitive on the world market, while it has large stocks tin
bars," President of PT. Timah, Wachid Usman, said in Pangkalpinang on Thursday.
The cooperation in producing downstream products was sought because PT Timah
still does not have the necessary technology, while the market is already there.
The feasibility study for such industries had already been conducted and a
memorandum of understanding had already been signed. It has been estimated that
by the end of 2008 production had already been made and will be launched early
in 2009.
In the development of downstream products, research and development will be
started intensively for market penetration. It is often that it is difficult to
read the wish of the market, so that the development of downstream undertakings
must be carried out with care, he said.
The management of PT Timah wished that the technology of processing tin bars
into downstream products would be realized soon to give an added-value to tin
commodities of Bangka Belitung province in the form of price and manpower.
The downstream products already developed by PT. Timah were still a few,
reaching only five percent of all the products. The downstream products include
tin balls, tin shots, tin anodes, lead free solders, and banka four nine (tin
with a pureity of more than 99 percent).
The development of downstream products, the added-value also increased. Other
countries have been buying the tin bars for processing into end-products for
sale at high prices.
The development of downstream products does not only concern composition
changes, but changes in form and combination as well.(*)
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