JAKARTA, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia will have the world's largest smelter with a capacity of 1.7 million tons of copper concentrate per year, President Joko Widodo said on Tuesday.
The groundbreaking for the construction of the smelter owned by PT Freeport Indonesia with a single line design was carried out Tuesday on an area of 103 hectares in the Java Integrated Industrial and Port Estate in East Java province's district of Gresik.
"The smelter to be built is the largest in the world because it is capable of processing 1.7 million tons of copper concentrate or 480,000 tons of copper metal per year. This is huge," Widodo told a press conference.
The construction of the domestic smelter is Indonesia's strategic policy to strengthen the downstream industry in the cooper sector after the state-owned company took over 51 percent of PT Freeport's shares, Widodo said.
Indonesia is one of the seven countries with the world's largest copper reserves, Widodo added.
Indonesian State-Owned Enterprises Minister Erick Thohir said that the construction of the smelter with an investment value of 3 billion U.S. dollars can also purify other precious metals such as silver and gold.
