Sales of refined tin from Indonesia's PT Timah, the world's largest integrated tin miner, fell 21 percent in the first six months of 2008 from a year ago on tight raw material supplies, the company said on Wednesday. The company sold about 24,000 tonnes of refined tin in the January-June period, down from 30,456 tonnes in the same period in 2007, Abrun Abubakar, Timah's spokesman, said.
"Supply of tin-in-concentrate from onshore mining sites has been depleting which affected sales in the first semester," Abubakar said, adding that the firm will focus on offshore mining in the second half of this year to boost raw material supply.
The company has said it plans to build additional dredges to increase off-shore mining activity. It plans to build seven small dredges with a total cost of 150 billion rupiah ($16.30 million) and one big dredge with an investment of 200 billion rupiah this year.
With the new dredges, the company expects to source 50 percent of its tin ore from off-shore mining by 2009, compared to 20 percent at present. The company produced 58,086 tonnes of tin-in-concentrate in 2007 with tin from onshore mining accounting for about 80 percent or 46,078 tonnes.
The company's tin exports slowed in the first quarter when police sealed a Timah barge carrying 1,400 tonnes of tin ore due to lack of proper shipping documents in February. "The sealed barge disrupted shipping activity, so many tin shipments which were supposed to be done in the first quarter, were moved to the second quarter," Abubakar said.
Despite falling sales, the company sold tin at an average price of $19,000 a tonne during the January-June period this year, a rise of about 40 percent form $13,459 a tonne in the same period last year boosted by rallying global tin prices.
The price of tin at the London Metal Exchange hit an all time high of $25,500 a tonne in mid-May, driven by worries over supply from main producers China and Indonesia as well as low inventories. With main producer China becoming a net importer in 2008 to meet local demand for tin, Indonesia is now Asia's largest exporter of the metal used in electrical solders and as a corrosion-resistant coating for other metal.