The Indonesian Food and Beverage Entrepreneurs Association (GAPMMI) reveals that locally produced salt cannot yet be used in the food and beverage industry, with product damage reaching 60 percent in the production process.
Adhi S. Lukman, Chairman of GAPMMI, said the damage was caused by high levels of magnesium and contamination of local salt.
“Some processed food industry companies cannot use local salt. They have been forced to try, but in the end the product damage is high,” Adhi said on Tuesday, January 7, 2025.
Currently, the majority of domestic processed foods use salt from Australia, which generally does not come from the sea, but from mining.
Putu Juli Ardika, Director General of Agroindustry at the Ministry of Industry, said that Presidential Regulation No. 126/2024 has stopped some salt imports for industry. Currently, the chlorine alkali plant (CAP) industry is still allowed to import salt only reaching 1.7 million tons (mt) this year.
CAP does not focus on sodium or chlorine concentrations in salt. CAP is very sensitive to contaminants or a maximum of 0.002 percent of the total salt.
“Because of that, the salt needed by the CAP industry is very difficult to obtain from the sea or must be obtained from salt mines,” Putu said.
He suggested that the government must verify GAPMMI’s findings before opening the salt import tap for the processed food industry, because some of the food and beverage industries in Indonesia have already absorbed local salt.
Later, Putu plans to check the capacity of local salt with entrepreneurs and farmers in the near future. Meanwhile, the verifier of local salt quality will come from a research institution that can dissect the quality of local salt.
Salt processing & production
Putu cited that he has found high-quality salt processing technology from seawater in Banten. However, the technology still requires quite high costs.
He is also concerned that the use of this technology will impact the welfare of salt farmers, which will be taken into consideration.
The government has earlier expressed comitment to improve the quality of local salt so that it can be accepted by the various food industries. Meanwhile, the purity of salt for various foods is between 94 percent and 96 percent. In addition, the purity of salt for the chemical industry is at least 97.4 percent and the pharmaceutical industry is at least 99.99 percent.
“There is still room for discussion, we will see what the results are. The intention is to improve national salt production technology so that it can meet the required salt quality,” Putu said.
Expansion and opportunities
According to data from the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries, the national salt raw material requirement in 2024 and 2025 is 4.9 mt. It is assumed that the requirement will increase by 2.5 percent per year due to population growth and industrial sector growth.
The plan is that by 2025, domestic production will reach 2.25 mt plus the remaining stock of 836 thousand tons, so the local salt supply will meet 63 percent of the total requirement. Currently, local salt production reaches 2.04 mt in 2024, exceeding the production target of 2 mt.
“The rest will certainly be a big and promising business opportunity for raw material salt producers, both community salt farmers and business entities,” Victor Gustaaf, Director General of Marine Space and Management at the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries, said on January 4, 2025.
The Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries will later make a breakthrough in the form of modeling the extensification of salt ponds in East Nusa Tenggara with a target of 2,500 hectares (ha) in 2025.
This extensification will later use conventional methods, but equipped with the implementation of harvest mechanisms as well as intensification with modernization of salt production with a target of 1,800 ha through the concentrated brine method in five provinces.
