Glossary

The mining terms worth knowing

From HBA and DMO to strip ratio and JORC, the vocabulary behind the data on this site, grouped by where you’ll run into it.

HBA: Indonesia's reference thermal-coal price, set monthly by the energy ministry on a fixed quality spec. An administered benchmark, not a traded market; it anchors royalties and the domestic price floor.
HPB: The benchmark selling price used to assess royalties on an actual cargo, derived from the HBA and adjusted for the coal's quality and shipment terms.
DMO: The rule requiring producers to sell a share of output domestically, with power-station coal capped well below the export benchmark. The gap to the export price is where margin is won or lost.
HPM: The benchmark mineral price set monthly by the energy ministry, the metals counterpart to coal's HBA. It anchors royalties on nickel, copper, tin, and other metal sales.
ICI: A family of price assessments for Indonesian coal at different calorific bands, one of the indices blended into the HBA.
Royalty (PNBP): The percentage of a coal or metal sale owed to the state, struck against the benchmark price. A higher benchmark raises what miners pay, so royalties move with the HBA.
Strip ratio: How much waste rock must be removed to expose one unit of saleable ore or coal. A rising ratio means more diesel and truck hours per ton, and signals the cheap, shallow material is running out.
Overburden: The waste rock sitting above a coal seam or orebody, typically measured in bank cubic metres (bcm). Moving it is the largest variable cost in an open-pit mine.
Calorific value (CV): The energy released when coal is burned, quoted in kcal/kg. Higher-CV coal earns a higher price because a power station needs less of it for the same output.
GAR / NAR / ADB: The moisture basis a calorific value is quoted on: gross as received, net as received, and air-dried. The same coal reads differently on each, so always check the basis before comparing two miners.
Cash cost: The cash spent to produce one ton, before financing and depreciation. Read it against the realised selling price to see how much cushion a miner has when benchmarks fall.
ASP: The price a miner actually realised across all cargoes in a period, blending spot and contract sales. It usually lags the headline benchmark, so compare ASP to the HBA to see how much a miner truly captured.
NPI: Low-grade ferronickel smelted from Indonesian laterite ore, the cheap feedstock for stainless steel. The raw-ore export ban pushed the country into NPI and battery-grade chemicals rather than shipping ore abroad.
Smelter: The plant that turns mined ore into refined metal or an intermediate product. Indonesia's downstreaming policy forces ore through domestic smelters instead of exporting it raw, capturing more value at home.
Saprolite & limonite: The two layers of a nickel laterite deposit. Higher-grade saprolite feeds RKEF smelters to make NPI and ferronickel; lower-grade limonite feeds HPAL plants to make battery chemicals.
RKEF / HPAL: The two routes for processing nickel ore. Rotary kiln–electric furnace (RKEF) turns saprolite into NPI and ferronickel; high-pressure acid leach (HPAL) turns limonite into battery-grade nickel chemicals.
LME: The global venue where nickel, copper, tin, and other base metals are priced. Indonesian metal sales reference the LME, so price swings there flow straight through to miners' revenue.
JORC Code: The Australasian standard for publicly reporting mineral resources and reserves, used widely across the industry. It draws a hard line between what geology suggests and what can be mined at a profit.
Resource: Material estimated to be in the ground with reasonable prospects for eventual extraction, graded Inferred, Indicated, or Measured by geological confidence. Geology, not yet economics.
Reserve: The part of a Measured or Indicated resource that survives the modifying factors — price, cost, recovery, permits, method. Graded Probable or Proved. This is what the business can actually sell.
Cut-off grade: The minimum ore quality worth mining at current prices and costs. It rises when prices fall, shrinking reserves with no change in the geology underground.
IUP: The mining business licence granting a company the right to explore or produce in a defined concession. The legal foundation under any Indonesian miner's output.
IUPK: The special mining licence covering strategic, state-reserved areas, often a former Contract of Work converted into the licence regime. It carries different fiscal and divestment terms than an ordinary IUP.
RKAB: The annual work plan and budget a miner must file and have approved before producing. Delays in RKAB approval can stall output even when prices are strong.
Hilirisasi: Indonesia's policy of banning raw-ore exports to force processing into smelters and refined products at home. It reshaped the nickel sector and is why metals miners build smelters rather than ship ore.