Semen Indonesia Exports Reach Two Million Tons

INDUSTRY.co.id - Surabaya- Semen Indonesia's export performance until August 2018 experienced a significant increase of up to 2 million tons, or up nearly 50 percent over the same period in 2017

Adi Munandir, Director of Marketing & Supply Chain at PT Semen Indonesia Persero Tbk (SMGR), said on Wednesday that the increase in exports was driven by the rules of the Chinese Government which now applies environmental policies, and has reduced cement production in the country.

"To this day, the export performance is almost 2 million tons, whereas previously it did not reach that. One of them was due to environmental policies in China and high demand," Adi said during the Investor Summit activity at the Indonesia Stock Exchange Building (BEI) Surabaya.

He hopes that with the increase in exports it can continue to boost the company's performance, which by the end of 2018 targeted export sales of up to 3 million tons, with a value of Rp.4.44 trillion.

"We will continue to boost export sales as a step to strengthen the rupiah exchange rate against the US dollar and to boost domestic utilization," he said.

He said the export push until the end of the year was because national cement production had a surplus or was currently over supply of up to 40 percent which made the competition very tight.

"We from Semen Indonesia certainly prioritize the domestic market first, after that it will encourage export performance," he said.

Semen Indonesia Corporate Secretary, Agung Wiharto said that during January to August 2018 SMGR had recorded export sales of 1.99 million tons, growing 42.7 percent over the same period last year of 1.39 million tons.

The successful achievement of export sales, he said, proved that the quality of products produced by SMGR had been recognized internationally and had high competitiveness.

While the increase in exports to China reached around 30 percent, the rest to several destination countries including Sri Lanka, Tahiti, East Timor, Tonga, United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Philippines, China.

Besides these countries SMGR also exports to Australia, Austria, Maldives, India and Bangladesh.

"To further increase sales in the export market, SMGR will strengthen the export network in destination countries and explore various other countries and actively participate in trade mission activities," he said. (Ant)