How a Reclusive Ex-Glencore Trader Became Indonesia's Nickel King |
Arif Kurniawan’s fortunes and influence have risen with those of the Southeast Asian country's expanding metals industry
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He’s the biggest trader in the world’s top producer of nickel, a metal that’s powering the shift to batteries and electric cars. His firms handle billions of dollars worth of ore and own stakes in mines covering an area around the size of New York City. Yet even in the metals industry, few know the name Arif Kurniawan.
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Indonesia’snickel sector has seen a dramatic rise in recent years, as technological innovation turned vast, low-grade deposits into mining dominance and industrial clout. Kurniawan’s fortunes have tracked that ascent. In under a decade, he has gone from earning paychecks at Glencore PLC to controlling approximately a third of his country’s domestic trade in nickel ore.
“Indonesia has been a complete disruptor of the nickel market over the last 10 years,” said Angela Durrant, principal analyst of base metals at consultancy CRU Group based in Sydney. “These local guys are the power brokers.”
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Much has been written about the Chinese tycoons who poured billions into processing nickel in the Southeast Asian nation, flipping the global market and wrongfooting rivals. Less has been said about the Indonesians who control the mines that are the ultimate source of the metal, and about the influence they wield.
This first account of Kurniawan’s rise is based on interviews with more than 19 miners, traders and smelters familiar with his operations, who did business with or worked alongside him, as well as dozens of filings from Indonesia’s company registry. Most of the people asked not to be identified so they could discuss private matters.
When contacted through two business associates, Kurniawan declined to comment for this story.
The route to prominence and wealth in Indonesia often passes through a family business. Kurniawan’s solo rise speaks instead to his alliances, skills and the speed of the country’s industrial transformation over the last decade. It also underscores the precarious nature of the achievement, as President Prabowo Subianto shakes up the mining industry and ignites a new battle for control of the country’s resources.
Kurniawan and his main business partner, Edi Liu Amas, between them have stakes in at least 20 mining concessions across the country’s major nickel centres, according to a Bloomberg analysis of corporate filings. These span more than 71,000 hectares (175,000 acres), an area roughly as large as New York City and far bigger than Weda Bay Nickel, the world’s largest mine in eastern Indonesia.
There’s no recent public data on Indonesia’s nickel ore trade, but according to the average estimate of a dozen fellow traders, miners and smelters, Kurniawan traded about a third of the ore market........