Indonesian tin miner Timah receives export permit of 30,000 tons for 2024

Earlier this week, tin prices surged to their highest in seven months this week, partly due to disruption of Indonesian exports amid delays in approvals of mining companies’ annual work plans, known locally as RKAB.

The government has been working through the backlog and issued more output quotas, but around 500 production proposals for various minerals are still under review, a mining official said on Tuesday.

“While the resumption of production is welcome to international markets, further extended licensing delays indicate that exports may remain suppressed for some time,” International Tin Association (ITA) analyst Tom Langston said.

“In China, a feedstock squeeze due to the cessation of tin mining in Myanmar’s Wa State since Aug. 1, 2023 adds increased uncertainty when combined with the loss of Indonesian supply which accounted for 73% of China’s refined tin imports in 2023,” said Langston.

He said Indonesian firms PT Timah and PT Mitra Stania Prima received their export licenses and that trading resumed on the Jakarta Futures Exchange on March 5.

PT Timah exported around 1,600 tons of refined tin in early March, Abdullah said on Monday. It produced 15,300 tons last year, an annual drop of 23%, ITA data showed.

PT Timah does not have to fulfill the 30,000-ton volume in its export permit.

Indonesia produced 74,400 tons of refined tin last year, about a fifth of global output, and exported 57,317 tons, data from the World Bureau of Metal Statistics showed.

(By Bernadette Christina and Mai Nguyen; Editing by Kanupriya Kapoor, Mrigank Dhaniwala and Varun H K)