Freeport Indonesian Unit May Start Exporting Copper Concentrate Wednesday -CEO

                 PT Freeport Indonesia may start exporting copper concentrate on Wednesday after it reached an agreement with the government late last month to resume the exports after a six-month stalemate.

Freeport Indonesia's Chief Executive Rozik Soetjipto said that the local unit of U.S. copper and gold producer Freeport-McMoRan Inc. (FCX) may resume overseas shipments with 10,000 metric tons of the mineral bound for China.

The Indonesian government in January imposed an export ban on unprocessed ores aimed at keeping lucrative refining work within the country. In addition to the ore-export ban, the government in January imposed export duties on mineral concentrates of copper, iron, zinc, and manganese. The duties, which begin at 20%-25%, would rise to 60% before a complete ban on concentrate exports is imposed in 2017.

The government and Freeport Indonesia on July 25 struck a deal allowing the miner to pay lower export taxes as it agreed to build a smelter in Indonesia.

Director General of Coal and Mineral Resources Sukhyar said then that Freeport Indonesia's total copper-concentrate exports are expected to reach 756,300 tons by year-end, with an estimated value of $1.56 billion. - morningstar

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Copper Holds Losses as Freeport Set to Resume Indonesia Exports

                   Copper dropped for a second day after Freeport-McMoRan Inc. received approval from Indonesia to resume exports from its Grasberg mine.

The metal for delivery in three months fell as much as 0.5 percent to $7,090 a metric ton on the London Metal Exchange and traded at $7,123 at 10:36 a.m. in Hong Kong. Copper has lost 3.2 percent since the start of the year.

Freeport plans to resume copper concentrate exports from Indonesia in August, the company said in a statement Friday. The company had reduced operations by about half at the Grasberg mine, the third largest in the world, after the government introduced restrictions in January to encourage local raw-material processing.

“The exports of concentrates will now be priced in and that’s why prices are down,” Tetsu Emori, a fund manager at Astmax Asset Management Inc., said by phone from Tokyo. “We don’t know yet how much of an impact it will have on actual production on metals.”

Copper futures for September in New York was little changed to $3.242 a pound, while the contract for the same month in Shanghai dropped 0.5 percent to 50,570 yuan ($8,173) a ton.

On the LME, aluminum, zinc and lead climbed, while nickel fell. Tin hadn’t traded.

Tin shipments from Indonesia, the largest exporter, are set to contract the most in seven months in July, Agung Nugroho, corporate secretary at PT Timah, said July 23.

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