GEM to invest US$8b to IGIP in North Kalimantan

GEM Co., Ltd., a battery raw material processing and recycling company, plans to invest US$8 billion to develop the Indonesia Green Industrial Park in North Kalimantan. The company also targets to fill key positions for production facilities in Indonesia with local Indonesian talent.

GEM President Commissioner and founder Xu Kaihua stated that GEM plans to continue investing in the downstream side of the Indonesian mineral industry. Currently, GEM operates a nickel processing plant in Morowali through a joint venture called QMB. The next investment is the development of a basic industrial area in the form of IGIP in North Kalimantan.

The initial investment is estimated to cost US$2 billion (Rp32.52 trillion), which would be increased to the full US$8 billion (Rp130 trillion) in subsequent stages.

Xu claims that GEM's production facility in Morowali will enable Indonesia to refine low-calorie nickel and recycle cobalt. The technology is also expected to allow the industry in Morowali to produce mixed hydroxide precipitate (MHP), which can then be processed into one of the main ingredients for producting batteries.

"Previously, nickel in Indonesia could only [be used to]produce stainless steel. Now there is a stainless steel and NPI (nickel pig iron) overcapacity, therefore it is important to have a new direction for nickel processing production," he said at Institut Teknologi Bandung Jatinangor Campus in Sumedang Regency, West Java Province on May 24, 2025.

However, Xu said that the operational activities of GEM's factory in Indonesia have so far tended to be expensive. The main problem is the lack of availability of local talent who can fill key positions in the production facility.

"The absence of local talent means we have to bring in talent from China. This is very expensive and unsustainable. Therefore, we have been trying to encourage local talent to continue their studies in China since 2019," he explained.

However, training programs through postgraduate and doctoral education at universities in China are not enough to fill GEM's workforce needs. Xu then took the initiative to build laboratory facilities on the ITB Jatinagor Campus worth US$ 270 million (Rp4.39 trillion) to increase the capacity and speed of local talent training.