Indonesia’s Weda Bay nickel project to put two RKEFs under operation

SHANGHAI, Feb 24 (SMM) – Indonesia’s Weda Bay nickel project is trying to put two 42,000kVA rotary kiln-electric furnaces (RKEF) for nickel pig iron under operation, SMM learned. The first batch of output is expected in March at the earliest.

These are the first two NPI RKEFs in Weda Bay to come on stream, and expected to produce about 1,800 mt of NPI a month after operations stabilise.

Weda Bay plans to build a total of 12 NPI RKEFs.

SMM data showed that Indonesia produced 40,400 mt of Ni content of NPI in January, up 2.91% from a month ago and 54.4% from a year ago.

Indonesia’s NPI output grew 54.9% from 2018 to 374,000 mt of Ni content in 2019.