JAKARTA (Reuters) – Operations are normal at Indonesia’s largest nickel processing complex, the Morowali industrial park on the eastern island of Sulawesi, despite floods this week, a company spokesperson said on Wednesday.
Tens of thousands of workers are employed by dozens of companies in the industrial park, sprawling over 3,000 hectares (7,400 acres), that produced about a fifth of Indonesia’s nickel pig iron last year, according to mining association data.
Dedy Kurniawan, a spokesperson of the company that runs the park, said four hours of heavy rain on Monday flooded an area of the park where new plants are being built.
“The floods did not halt plants’ operations,” he said, adding that construction work on the new plants had also returned to normal.
Indonesia’s nickel processing industry has experienced several fatal incidents in recent years.
In December 2024, a fire killed 13 workers and injured 46 at a nickel smelter furnace owned by Indonesia Tsingshan Stainless Steel (ITSS) in the park.
(Reporting by Ananda Teresia and Bernadette Christina; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
