Asia
7 October 2026
Vale and Huayou to investigate sulphur recovery at Pomalaa
PT Vale Indonesia and Huayou Cobalt say that they are considering constructing a rotary kiln smelting blast furnace in order to recover and reuse sulphur from tailings at their Pomalaa HPAL project in southeast Sulawesi. PT Vale president and CEO Bernardus Irmanto said that the proposal forms part of efforts to mitigate high sulphur costs resulting from the shutdown of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. Sulphur prices in Indonesia have risen from $100/t to $1,100/t over the past two years, most of that this year since the beginning of the US-Iranian conflict.
The Pomalaa site is being developed by Vale in partnership with Ford and Huayou, at a total investment cost of $4.5 billion. The HPAL plant will have a capacity of 120,000 t/a of mixed hydroxide precipitate (MHP) when it begins operations later this year. Vale says that it is also reportedly considering using pyrites to generate additional sulphuric acid for the HPAL operations.
