Indonesia expects to produce 90,000 tonnes of refined tin in 2011 if prices stay high enough to encourage mining, a senior official said on Friday Heavy rains and floods caused by the La Nina weather anomaly hit tin miners in Indonesia, squeezing supply from the world's top exporter and pushing the price to a record high of $27,500 a tonne in early November.
Indonesia's easily-accessible onshore reserves are depleting after centuries of unchecked mining while output from smaller producers has been hit by recent crackdowns on illegal extraction and a 2009 law requiring miners to obtain permits.
Indonesia produced 78,965 tonnes of refined tin this year, some 12.3 percent below a target of 90,000 tonnes, said Bambang Setiawan, director general of coal and mineral resources at the energy and mineral resources ministry. "If the price stays high like this, production can reach around 90,000 tonnes (next year)," Setiawan told reporters at an end-year news conference.
The price of tin - used in food packaging and as an electronic solder stood - at $26,525 a tonne on Friday. It has risen 56.49 percent so far this year. Tin prices could potentially hit record highs at around $30,000 a tonne next year before falling sharply back as producers ramp up output, consumer goods group Henkel said in an interview on December 8. Indonesia's refined tin exports were estimated at 8,986.38 tonnes in November, up 10 percent from a year earlier, the trade ministry data shows.
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