A fire at the PT Semen Tonasa IV plant in Bungoro, South Sulawesi, on Monday gutted the plant’s newest mill.


The plant, owned by PT Semen Gresik Group, has estimated a loss in output of up to 8000tpd of cement.


Gresik corporate secretary Sunardi Prionomurti said production at the plant would stop for at least 10 days.


“We need maybe 10 days to repair the mill,” he said.

“I expect the total production loss for the 10 days reach 60,000t. We sell the cement for IDR750,000/t (US$87.75). So, we could have financial losses of around IDR45bn,” Sunardi said.

Burning cables at the finishing plant were believed to have triggered the fire. “The cables burned and caused a bigger fire. The fire gutted two of our newest mills”.

However, Indonesian Cement Association (ASI) chairman Urip Timuryono, does not expect the loss in production to affect the government’s production target for this year. The stoppage caused a loss of about 40,0000t.

“But the decline in production during the recovery work could be offset by boosting production levels at other factories,” he told The Jakarta Post.

Urip added that the incident would also not affect cement distribution, as the plant, owned by Indonesia’s largest cement producer, state-owned PT Semen Gresik Group, still had about 200,000t from last year’s production in stock.