Amidst concern about sweeping changes in domestic manufacturing related to ‘trade concessions’ made by Indonesian government to USA, minister of industry Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita, stated that the local content policy (TKDN) will still apply to certain products from US.

While Indonesian players closed down operations, China-based company PT Xinhai Knitting Indonesia has recently built a textile factory in Brebes, Central Java province with US$40 million of investment (approximately Rp648 billion). Sitting on 8 hectares of land, the textile factory will focus on producing knitted fabrics.

Xpeng is among the fastest growing EV player in the world. In the first half of 2025, the company delivered nearly 200,000 Smart EVs, already surpassing its full-year 2024 deliveries. Last month alone, Xpeng delivered nearly 35,000 vehicles, skyrocketed 224% year-on-year. How about Indonesian operation?

Last year’s SIAL-Interfood exhibition in Jakarta was interesting because out of 1,200 participating companies, China dominated with over 250 participants. Some of them have buit local factories. Four years ago, dairy giant Yili Group opened one of the largest ice cream factories in the country.

Shares of BYD Co Ltd ended flat on Wednesday (Jul 2) to make a market capitalisation of RMB1 trillion or around US$139.5 billion. BYD is now worth about half of Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC), which dominates automotive market in Indonesia until now. 

Crude steel production from 70 countries reporting to the World Steel Association, which accounted for approximately 98% of the total world crude steel production, declined 3.8% year-on-year in May 2025, dragged down by 4.7% drop in Asia and Oceania, the single largest production region.

As Indonesia and Singapore are moving closer to renewable energy trade, we see growing investments in solar panel, module or photovoltaic glass in the country. The world’s second largest manufacturer of PV glass for solar power is getting closer to commercial operation.

In the past few months, we’ve seen more announcement of new projects in Indonesia to process natural gas into various chemicals, but particularly ammonia, ammonium nitrate, nitric acid, ethanol, and methanol.

After more than three decades ‘controlling’ upstream petrochemical industry and plastic raw materials, Chandra Asri (TPIA) will have a serious competitor very soon with scheduled commercial operation of new cracker by PT Lotte Chemical Indonesia (LCI). Chandra Asri was last traded at Rp10,000 to make a market capitalisation of Rp865 trillion or US$53 billion, unbelievably expensive for an old factory.