Harita Group
The Harita Group is an Indonesian business conglomerate owned and controlled by the Lim family. The group's core businesses are in the natural resources sector, which operates throughout Indonesia. Today, the Harita Group has businesses in nickel mining, ferronickel smelters, bauxite mining, alumina refineries, palm oil plantations, shipping, timber, coal and property. The current CEO of Harita Group is Lim Gunawan Hariyanto.
History
The group was started in 1915 by Lim Tju King, an immigrant from China. He started with a small trading shop in Long Iram inland of the Mahakam River in East Kalimantan, Indonesia. His son Lim Hariyanto Wijaya Sarwono took over and moved into the timber business, first by trading timber and later going into timber concessions and in manufacturing of plywood in 1983.Starting in the late 1980s, Lim Hariyanto started rapidly expanding the business through joint venture partnerships. They expanded their timber and plywood division, entered into gold mining in 1988 through a joint venture project with Rio Tinto Group named Kelian Equatorial Mining and later into coal mining in 1988. From there, the group continued to diversify into palm oil plantations, bauxite mining, and nickel mining.
After the Indonesian government banned the export of raw minerals in 2014, Harita Group and its partners built a $400 million ferronickel smelter and Indonesia's first alumina refinery for $900 million. In December 2019, Glencore became a partner of the group's aluminium business after buying an 18% stake in Indonesian-listed PT Cita Mineral Investindo Tbk via a rights issue for $93 million. In June 2021, Harita commissioned the first HPAL plant in Indonesia, which produces Mixed Hydroxide Precipitate, a raw material for electric vehicle batteries. The project had an estimated cost of $1 billion.