Indonesian private smelters report continuing difficulties in obtaining ore supplies, as monsoon rain and winds have limited mining activity by small-scale miners, according to several reports on Thursday.
Some small smelters have been processing tin slag as intensifying rains and strong winds hampered onshore and offshore mining, cutting tin ores supply from individual miners, Johan Murod, director of Bangka-Belitung Timah Sejahtera, a consortium of seven smelters, told Reuters. "We can’t fully operate as we have run out of tin ores. Our suppliers have limited stocks of tin ores," Murod said. Members of the consortium have been operating at 30% of capacity since they resumed operations in October, and cannot increase production due to lack of ores, he said.
However the production plans of the two large integrated producers are unchanged. "Our areas of mining have not been affected," Koba Tin spokesman Dharmansyah Nawawi told Metal Bulletin. Abrun Abukabar, PT Timah’s spokesman told Reuters that while the rains may slow production at Timah until the end of the year, it will not affect its full-year production target of 49,000 tonnes. We have factored in weather in our annual production target," he said, adding that "Timah’s production will be lower in November than previous months as some of the dredges will have to operate along the coastline, where tin ore reserves are lower, rather than in the middle of the sea, to avoid bad weather."
