Freeport Indonesia to wrap up Gresik plant repairs by early September

Reuters | August 27, 2025 | 7:14 am Top Companies Asia Copper

Freeport Indonesia's $3bn copper smelter to be completed by end of 2023 - official

Freeport’s Indonesia copper smelter. (File image.)

Copper miner PT Freeport Indonesia expects to complete in early September repair work at its joint-venture smelter in East Java, a company spokesperson said on Wednesday.

Repairs at an oxygen plant delayed startup of the Gresik smelter, a joint venture between Freeport Indonesia and Japan’s Mitsubishi Materials Corp, which has been under maintenance in the past month, the company said.

“Repairs of the oxygen plant at PT Smelting are scheduled for completion in early September 2025,” the spokesperson, Katri Krisnati, said, without elaborating.

The plant, which takes about 40% of Freeport’s copper concentrate output from its Grasberg mine, has annual output capacity of 342,000 metric tons of copper cathode.

Freeport resumed operation at its other copper smelter in Manyar in May, starting copper cathode production there in July.

In mid-2023, Indonesia launched a ban on exports of copper concentrate and other raw minerals, but Freeport received a permit to continue shipments until September 16.

By mid-August, it had exported about 65% of its concentrate quota of 1.27 million tons.

(By Fransiska Nangoy; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)