PT Indonesia Chemical Alumina (“ICA”) is a joint venture company established in Februari 2007 to study the feasibility of building a chemical grade alumina plant at Tayan, West Kalimantan. The formation of ICA follows the signing of a joint venture agreement in March 2006. The JVA followed many years of negotiations, which were made more difficult due to the tremendous political and economic challenges Indonesia went through following the economic crisis in 1998. ANTAM’s share in ICA is 49% with an option to increase its ownership to 51% in the future while the other three partners own the remaining 51%, and consist of Showa Denko KK (SDK) of Japan 30%, Straits Trading Amalgamated Resources Private Limited of Singapore (STAR) 15% and Marubeni Corporation of Japan 6%. During 2007, ICA continued to negotiate with sponsors and related parties in terms of shareholder structure and financing. ICA also worked to update a bankable feasibility study (BFS) conducted by Mizuho in 2003 and to finalize the selection of the Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) contractor, including scope of work, project costs and cost distribution.
Inline with discussion among sponsors, in 2008, ICA’s share ownership changed to ANTAM 65%, SDK 20% and Marubeni 15%. In 2010, Marubeni sold its ownership in ICA and as a result the shareholding composition became 80% ANTAM and 20% SDK. In 2010, the EPC contract of the Tayan CGA project was signed with a consortium of PT Wijaya Karya (Persero) Tbk, Tsukishima Kikai Co. Ltd., and PT Nusantara Energi Abadi (Nusea) as the EPC contractor of the project. Preliminary works such as land leveling and land clearing had begun at the project site in 2010.
The construction of the Tayan CGA plant commenced on April 11, 2011 and in 2014 the project was on commissioning phase. Commercial operations of the project commenced in early 2015.
Since 2015-2018, ICA continued to face hurdles and challenges in the plant’s operations. Inline with these conditions, the Company’s shareholders discussed ICA’s operations sustainability. On 29 May 2018, ANTAM and SDK signed Conditional Share Purchase Agreement (CSPA) as part of the restructuring of ANTAM and SDK’s cooperation in ICA. The CSPA
serves as the basic agreement related to SDK’s planned exit as a shareholder of PT ICA.
On 10 November 2018 ICA formally restarted its alumina plant following bauxite ore charging. The Tayan CGA plant delivered the first alumina tryhidrate product on November 13, 2018 with first shipment occurred on November 16, 2018 headed for Taiwan. On 28 December 2018 ANTAM and SDK announced the signing of the deed of transfer of sale shares as the final step of ANTAM’s purchase of SDK’s shares of ICA. Following the signing of the document, ANTAM formally owns 100% of ICA from previous ownership of 80% with the remaining 20% owned by SDK. The sale of SDK’s shares was the peak of the discussion between ANTAM and SDK which began since mid 2016.
discussion between ANTAM and SDK which began since
The next period was the time when ICA proved it was able to operate, produce and market the alumina products independently from the Tayan CGA plant; in which it remains as Indonesia’s only producer of CGA in Indonesia.