Prabowo to attend groundbreaking ceremony for Ningde Times project

President Prabowo is scheduled to preside over a groundbreaking ceremony on June 29 for an integrated electric vehicle battery project in East Hamahela, Maluku North province, to be built by China's Ningde Times (CATL) investment support totaling about $6 billion.The project facilities will integrate mining operations, smelters, high-pressure acid leaching (HPAL) processing, and precursor and cathode production in what the Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources called the world's first project of this scale. The fully integrated system is expected to significantly reduce the cost of electric vehicle battery production in Indonesia. The project is one of 18 downstream industrial projects to be developed in Indonesia, valued at nearly US$45 billion, along with others in nickel, bauxite, oil refining, energy storage, coal gasification (DME), and fisheries, agriculture and forestry.