Financing is in place for construction of a copper smelter-refinery in Indonesia.
Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold (NYSE), with a 20% interest, has new partners for the US$550-million smelter-refinery at Gresik on East Java. The new partners are Mitsubishi Materials of Japan (with a 70% interest) and Fluor Daniel of California (10%). (Financial problems forced Metallgesellschaft AG of Germany and Nippon Mining & Metals out of the project.)
The plant will have an annual capacity of 200,000 tonnes copper. Freeport, operator of the huge Indonesian copper-gold-silver Grasberg/Ertsberg project, plans to provide 600,000 tonnes of feed per year to the new plant, which will use Mitsubishi technology. Fluor will look after engineering, procurement and construction.
Startup is scheduled for the second half of 1998.
Meanwhile, Freeport reports assays of 5.6% copper and 2.24 grams gold per tonne over a 233-metre interval from a pair of holes at the Big Gossan deposit at Grasberg/Ertsberg. Another pair of holes, 50 metres distant, averaged 10.4% copper and 4 grams gold over 107 metres.
Big Gossan, with estimated contained reserves of 500 million lb. copper and 300,000 oz. gold, remains open to the west and at depth.
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