China's Weiming advances Indonesia Nickel matte project

Major Chinese environmental protection equipment manufacturer Weiming has on 25 August made progress in its Jiaman high nickel matte project in the north Maluku province of Wedabay, Indonesia, the company announced.

Weiming has started to preheat Jiaman's first side-blown converter on 25 August, which is a key step to bring the equipment to the linkage debugging stage before advancing to the production phase.

Jiaman, a partnership between Weiming and Merit International Capital, has a nameplate capacity of 40,000 t/yr in nickel metal equivalent. It has four production lines with 10,000t of nickel metal equivalent each.

Jiaman is the second project to adopt the oxygen-enriched side-blowing furnace (OESBF) process in Indonesia, following major Chinese nickel and lithium-ion battery cathode active material (CAM) precursor manufacturer producer CNGR in 2022. The OESBF process is cost-effective as it uses ores with low nickel content as feedstock and recovers cobalt metal, CNGR said.

Market participants are monitoring the progress of the OESBF process closely, as well as its feasibility, as it is still a developing technology.

Weiming has two other high nickel matte projects in Indonesia, producing 40,000 t/yr and 50,000 t/yr of nickel metal respectively, bringing the company's total production capacity to 130,000 t/yr in nickel metal equivalent.