Minister of Research and Technology and head of the National Innovation and Research Agency (BRIN) Bambang Brodjonegoro said the government will scale up the use of technology to improve the quality of salt produced in Indonesia. “The use of technology will be intensified to reduce our dependence on imported industrial salt,” Brodjonegoro said in a press conference after attending a limited meeting with President Joko Widodo in Jakarta on Monday.
The national industry imports 2.9 million tons of salt per year, with the chlor-alkali plant (CAP) accounting for the largest chunk of demand at 2.3 million tons.
Meanwhile, the demand for various food salts is around 540 thousand tons. Mining and pharmaceuticals require smaller quantities of salt.
According to Bambang, technology will be identified to produce food salts that are readily absorbed by the human body.
“Currently, the technology being developed is (meant for) integrated industrial salt (production). This means that this is a salt factory that is directly integrated with the land so that salt farmers can later sell their salt products, which have less than 90 percent sodium chloride (NaCl), to factories, while the factories will improve the quality of the salt until (the level of) NaCl is above 97 percent,” he said. (INE)
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