The 1Q21 cement sales of PT Indocement Tunggal Prakarsa Tbk have seen a pick up. Indocement Director and Corporate Secretary, Antonius Marcos, said that in March 2021, the company recorded sales of 1.4Mt, more than 200,000t higher sales than in the previous month.
Indocement reached 4Mt during 1Q21 (3.9Mt in 1Q20) and the company still believes that sales growth in 2021 can reach four per cent higher than in 2020.
This year, Indocement will strengthen its sales in Sumatra. This is mostly due to the Trans-Sumatra Road project, which is considered to have a domino effect on cement demand. The strengthening of sales in Sumatra Island is supported by the existence of two Indocement cement terminals in Lampung and Palembang.
"Besides Sumatra, one of the potential markets for Indocement is Southeast Sulawesi. In that province, especially in the Konawe and Morowali regions, there are a number of smelter projects that have the potential to absorb cement demand. The strengthening of the market in Sulawesi is also supported by the presence of a floating terminal in Konawe," Mr Marcos said.
Indocement plans to allocate capital expenditure (capex) for this year of IDR1trn-1.1trn (US$70m). This amount is similar to last year, whereby the company spent IDR1.06trn for capex purposes. Mr Marcos said most of the capex will be used to continue the company’s emissions reduction sustainability programme by installing filter bags at one of its lines in Citeureup.
The capex is also used for the completion of refuse-derived fuel (RDF) receiving facilities and preparation for the installation of PLN facilities at the Tarjun plant. This RDF facility will later process waste into fuel. Mr Marcos said that the company's RDF project continues to run as scheduled where the process of completing the RDF acceptance support facility is still running. "We expect it to be completed in the fourth quarter of this year," he added.
