An Indonesian cement manufacturer, PT Semen Baturaja, Tbk (SMBR), recently has been successful in obtaining patent protection in Indonesia for its invention on white clay. The patent was granted on October 10, 2023, by the Directorate General of Intellectual Property (DGIP) and is assigned registration number IDP000090055. The invention for which the patent is filed for is entitled “Process for producing White Clay as the ingredient for NPK fertilizer”. The application was filed on February 9, 2021 under filing number P00202100948 and was published by the DGIP on September 13, 2021.
SMBR is a state-owned company that was established in 1974 by two state-owned cement companies, PT Semen Padang and PT Semen Gresik, with main manufacturing plant in the town of Baturaja, Ogan Komering Ilir Regency, South Sumatera Province, Indonesia. It became a public limited liability company (PT, Tbk.) following the initial public offering (IPO) in 2013, after which it is listed at the Indonesian Stock Exchange. In 2022, the Indonesian government transferred the majority of its shares in SMBR to PT Semen Indonesia, Tbk., (SMGR) another state-owned company that serves as holding to other cement manufacturing state-owned companies.
According to the corporate secretary of SMGR, Vita Mahreyni, the granting of the patent has officially confirmed SMBR’s status as the first among Indonesian cement manufacturers that successfully produces white clay as by-products. Vita further explained that white clay is an important ingredient for producing nitrogen-phosphate-kalium (NPK), and the patent obtained by SMBR would amplify SMGR’s business opportunity from the optimalization of resources and efficiency of its production process.
Vita claimed that SMBR has been elaborating on the potential of white clay business since 2019 with in-house research and development in order to come to more efficient production with better quality of the resulting product. President Director of SMBR, Suherman Yahya, added that the patent is an important achievement for his company. Yahya further professed that until the third quarter of 2023, revenue from white clay sales had seen 13% increase to the amount of IDR 27 billion as compared to the same period in previous year, and contributed up to ten percent to his company’s increase in total revenue.
Yahya expected that the patent would give SMBR competitive advantage in producing white clay for NPK fertilizer, which in turn would benefit national fertilizer industry in a way that it maintains consistent availability of quality white clay.
According to the published abstract, the patented invention disclosed a process for producing white clay using vertical roller mill to roll selected mineral ingredients that has been crushed to the size of less than 80 millimeters. The resulting white clay powder would then be dried using the remaining hot gas from the furnace for one hour in order to reduce its H2O content to as low as 7%. The specification of resulting white clay from this process would also contain less than 50% SiO2, more than 9% Al2O3, more than 75% particles sized 100 mesh and less than 60% particles sized 325 mesh.