Mining Media International’s Regional Technical Conference (RTC) series continues next week with RTC Kalimantan Mining to be held at Swiss Belhotel Balikpapan, Indonesia, on Thursday, August 11, in conjunction with Balikpapan Expo 2016 and a Coal Club Indonesia networking event.

The government is working to ramp up coal utilisation domestically, a move hailed by Indonesian miners in response to the lingering global coal downturn. It is expected that the government’s power capacity expansion plan for an extra 35GW of power generation through 2019, of which there will be 20GW of coal-fired power, may double domestic coal demand.

The expansion brings new opportunities for coal mining, not only with supply but also with the building of coal-fired power plants and mine mouth plants. Other opportunities for coal are with coal gasification, coal liquefaction and coal upgrading. The expected development of coal-fired power plants in neighbouring South East Asia countries also provide hopes for Indonesian miners to tap these markets.

Despite these opportunities, a number of challenges remain as miners have to cut production costs further to adapt to falling prices, which many predict will continue this year. Only companies with efficient mining practices will survive.

The main goals of RTC Kalimantan Mining are to give insight into new business opportunities for coal miners; to share experience of cost-cutting measures; and to explore the latest technology in order not only to help Indonesia coal industry remain survive but be competitive with suppliers from Australia and South Africa.

Speakers include Awang Faroek Ishak, Governor of East Kalimantan; Ben Lawson, chief operating officer, PT Sanaman Coal; Poltak Sinaga, GM Coal Processing and Handling Division, PT Kaltim Prima Coal; Bramantya Putra, operational director, PT Indo Tambangraya Megah; Hendra Sinadia, deputy executive director, Indonesian Coal Mining Association (APBI); and Daniel Madre, managing director, PT Danmar Explorindo.

The conference will strive to answer challenging questions:

• What is the future of Indonesia’s coal industry?
• What are the business opportunities in power generation projects both for mining companies and mining support firms?
• How coal miners in Kalimantan can further tap domestic and global markets and how to be competitive with suppliers from Australia and South Africa in export markets?
• How technologies answer the cost efficiency initiative amid falling coal prices?
• How to resolve logistic challenges in the future?