Indonesia’s PT Timah plans to boost the proportion of its tin production coming from offshore mining from 20% in 2007 to 50% by 2009, President Director Wachid Usman told Reuters on Tuesday. The company plans to build seven new small dredges with a total cost of 150 billion rupiah ($16.19 million) and one big dredge with an investment of 200 billion rupiah this year to increase off-shore mining activity.
“It’s getting difficult to mine tin onshore because there are too many problems such as environment and land issues,” Usman said. He also said that Timah had looked at a possible acquisition in Australia. “We did a survey (for tin reserves) in Darwin last month. It’s still at an exploration stage, so it’s too early to predict (the reserves),” he said. Last week Corporate Secretary Abrun Abubakar told Bisinis Indonesia that the company was looking at possible acquisitions in Australia and Zambia.
Timah, which produced 58,086 tonnes of tin-in-concentrate in 2007, has commissioned an independent review of its reserves in Indonesia, which were last reported as 356,000 tonnes at the end of 2006.
