On Wednesday, Britain signed a memorandum of understanding with Indonesia to collaborate on critical minerals, a sector in which Indonesia is rich, according to the UK embassy in Jakarta. This agreement aims to promote policy dialogue, share technical expertise, and focus on areas such as supply chain resilience, sustainable processing, and addressing the criticality of minerals, though specific details were not disclosed.
Britain’s Development Minister, Anneliese Dodds, who signed the agreement alongside Indonesia’s Energy Minister, highlighted the partnership as positioning both nations as significant players in the critical minerals supply chain. Indonesia, home to vast reserves of tin, copper, bauxite, and the world’s largest supply of nickel ore, is keen to enhance its mineral value by encouraging investments in processing and electric vehicle battery manufacturing.
This announcement follows a similar move by the United States two months earlier, which approached Indonesia about joining a multinational critical mineral partnership aimed at fostering sustainable supply chains. Indonesia has significantly expanded its nickel processing capacity since imposing a ban on unprocessed ore exports in 2020, but environmental concerns over deforestation, and water and air pollution caused by smelting operations have been raised by environmentalists.
Earlier on Wednesday, Dodds told Reuters that the UK’s agreement with Indonesia would not only create local jobs but also safeguard the environment from the potential harms of mining, describing the partnership as “incredibly important.”
