KUALA LUMPUR: Tanah Makmur Bhd and soon-to-be-listed Spring Energy Resources Bhd said they are unaffected by the freeze on bauxite mining applications in Terengganu as their operations are located in neighbouring Pahang.

Spring Energy executive director Yap Ho Huat told digitaledge DAILY that the company’s bauxite mines are located in Pahang. Also, its main revenue contributor is still the quarry mining business.

“So far, we have no issues in Pahang. There are a lot of restrictions in Pahang concerning pollution too, and we have complied with them all,” he said.

“wOur mines are located in our former plantation land now earmarked for property development at Bukit Goh, Kuantan. The freeze does not affect us,” Tanah Makmur chief financial officer Teh Foo Hock told the digitaledge DAILY yesterday.

Both Yap and Teh were responding to a Bloomberg report yesterday that applications to mine bauxite in Terengganu had been frozen after the local government said it wanted to safeguard against pollution, underscoring the risks associated with a boom in production to feed China’s aluminium smelters.

“As of now, the state government is not prepared to approve bauxite applications in the whole state of Terengganu,” Johan Ibrahim, deputy director of the land and mines office, was quoted as saying in the report. 

Bloomberg reported that the rapid expansion in mining had drawn scrutiny after reports that bauxite residue was polluting the environment with radioactive material. Bernama first reported Terengganu’s suspension earlier this month, quoting its chief minister, Ahmad Razif Abdul Rahman. Most of the nation’s bauxite is mined in Pahang.

Spring Energy started mining bauxite in January 2014, operating a mine on a 65.87ha piece of land in Bukit Goh. The company is a subcontractor of the mining operation by Kreatif Selaras Mining Sdn Bhd, which is a 60%-owned subsidiary of Tanah Makmur Bhd.

This article first appeared in digitaledge Daily, on September 15, 2015.