JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Indonesia-headquartered PT Antam is evaluating several promising gold export markets including Malaysia, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and several African countries, to increase its revenue.
This comes amid the challenges being experienced by the company in its main gold export market – India.
Antam president and director Tedy Badrujaman on Thursday said the substantial gold sales increase achieved in 2015 had been an anomaly in line with higher gold exports to India following the signing of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations -India free trade agreement.
“However, our gold sales for this year will be effected owing to [the] limitation of gold imports to India which was applied to every importer since the end of last year. Nonetheless, our gold sales target of 11.5 t remains. We are confident that our strategy in penetrating new gold export markets will augment our gold sales,” he added.
At the end of the first half of this year, in line with the lower exchange rate of the rupiah against the dollar, Antam benefited from a foreign exchange gain.
Meanwhile, Antam has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with PT Freeport Indonesia (PTFI) and PT Smelting regarding the development of anode slime processing and precious metal refinery (PMR) facility plant.
Through the MoU, Antam and PTFI will evaluate Antam’s participation in PTFI’s proposed PMR project.
The proposed project is one of Antam’s inorganic growth initiatives and is also a risk diversification measures to ensure gold feed is further processed.