Jakarta. A Sino-Chilean consortium Elecmetal Longteng Indonesia recently announced that it had invested almost $40 million to build a grinding ball facility in Central Java's integrated industrial area of Batang.

The company is a joint venture between Chilean mill liner ME Elecmetal and Chinese steelmaker Longteng Special Steel. The grinding ball facility in Batang would produce 200,000 tons of grinding media each year. About 30-35 percent of the output will go into supplying the domestic demand. Up to 70 percent of the products will go into exports, particularly Australia as one of its main markets for grinding balls.

"With a strong sales network and state-of-the-art production technology, we are upbeat that we will achieve the sales target of 100,000 tons in the coming years," ME Elecmetal and Elecmetal Longteng Indonesia's director Eugenio Arteaga recently said.

Longteng Group's president Xu Sheng (Shawn) recently said that the project "could bring a positive impact to the national metal industry." 

Government data shows the basic metal industry grew by 12.36 percent in the third quarter of 2024.

"The factory shows that Indonesia is increasingly more attractive to global investors," Rizky Aditya Wijaya, a senior official at the Industry Ministry, said.