Indonesia: It is necessary to implement a policy to restrict the export of nickel-derived products with a nickel content of less than 70%

Eddy Soeparno, Deputy Chairman of Indonesia's Seventh Committee DPR RI, said that with its large nickel resources and reserves, Indonesia has the opportunity to become a major player in the raw material supply chain for the future of battery electric vehicles.

Eddy Soeparno said total nickel resources in 2021 will reach 13.957 billion tonnes of ore and 145.208 million tonnes of metal. Total nickel reserves reached 4.561 billion tons of ore and 49.260 million tons of metal. According to 2020 U.S. Geological Survey data, Indonesia is the world's largest producer of nickel ore, with nickel production reaching 800,000 tons in 2019, compared with world nickel production of 2.668 million tons. The largest proportion of Indonesia's nickel resource reserves is nickel ore with a nickel content of less than 1.7%, which contains a large amount of cobalt used in lithium battery materials.

Speaking at the Nickel Summit in Bali on July 26, 2022, Eddy Soeparno said: "In order to support the government's strategic project to develop electric vehicle batteries, there needs to be incentives for laterite nickel ore that can be processed through a hydrometallurgical process with a nickel content of less than 1.7%. The HPAL plant in the world. As the country with the largest reserves of nickel in the world, as well as other metal minerals such as copper, manganese, aluminum, etc., is currently building an ecosystem for the electric vehicle industry, Indonesia has a high bargaining position in controlling the supply chain to meet the needs of battery-based demand for electric vehicles”.

The Seventh Committee DPR RI is also a member of Indonesia Battery Holding Company (IBH) through its partners: Mind Id, PT Antam Tbk, PT Pertamina (Persero) and PT PLN (Persero), in collaboration with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) Accelerating the development of a battery-based national electric vehicle industry ecosystem has become a national project.

He emphasized that in order to encourage the development of the domestic downstream nickel industry, policies to restrict the export of NPI and FeNi or nickel derivatives with nickel content below 70% need to be implemented.