AlamTri Brand Guidelines: Adaro Energy Renamed After Its 2024 Thermal Coal Spin-Off

A Spanish bid for a remote coal block.

AlamTri — formally PT Alamtri Resources Indonesia Tbk — is the Jakarta-listed group known until November 2024 as Adaro Energy. Its story starts with a coal block rather than a company. In the 1970s, English and Indonesian Wikipedia say, the Indonesian government divided East and South Kalimantan, on the island of Borneo, into eight coal blocks and invited bids. The Spanish state-owned company Enadimsa bid for Block 8, in the Tabalong area of South Kalimantan, which no other company wanted because it was considered too remote and its coal too low in quality, Indonesian Wikipedia says.

Enadimsa formed PT Adaro Indonesia to run the block, naming it after the Adaro family in recognition of its long role in mining in Spain. Adaro Indonesia signed a coal co-operation agreement with the government on 2 November 1982, English Wikipedia says, and in 1989 a consortium of Australian and Indonesian companies bought 80 per cent of it from Enadimsa.

The mine took time to finance. Indonesian Wikipedia says the banks approached in 1990 were wary because the sub-bituminous coal was not yet traded internationally in significant volumes, and because part of the planned haul road crossed swamps; the shareholders borrowed a smaller sum. Work on a haul road of about 80 kilometres, west of the Barito River, began in September 1990, and the Paringin mine opened in March 1991. That year Adaro Indonesia registered Envirocoal as the trade mark for its coal, which Indonesian Wikipedia describes as very low in ash and sulphur. The first cargo, for Germany’s Krupp, sailed on 22 October 1991, and commercial operation began a year later, on 22 October 1992.

Adaro Energy, from pit to power.

The listed company came later. It was established in 2004 as PT Padang Karunia, the company says, and Indonesian Wikipedia says that in 2005, through a company called PT Alam Tri Abadi, it acquired Adaro Indonesia in a largely debt-financed purchase. In 2008 it listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange and took the name PT Adaro Energy Tbk; the company says it meant to operate as an integrated coal-based mining and energy business. In 2022 it became PT Adaro Energy Indonesia Tbk, a change approved by shareholders on 9 February 2022 that the company presents as underlining its Indonesian identity.

Under the Adaro name the group built what the company calls a vertically integrated pit-to-power supply chain. In 2010 it bought into IndoMet Coal, a metallurgical coal venture with BHP Billiton in Central and East Kalimantan, taking the remaining shares in 2016; in 2011 it moved into South Sumatra; and in 2018, Indonesian Wikipedia says, it went abroad with the Kestrel coal mine in Australia. In June 2016 it began building a 2,000-megawatt coal-fired power station at Batang, in Central Java, with Japan’s J-Power and Itochu, and in 2019 a 200-megawatt plant began operating in Tabalong. Indonesian Wikipedia says that the group mined 62.88 million tonnes of coal in 2022, making it Indonesia’s second-largest coal producer by output.

Metallurgical coal, used in steelmaking, became a second line. Indonesian Wikipedia says the Haju mine began producing semi-soft coking coal in 2015 and the Lampunut mine hard coking coal in 2019, and that in 2020 hard coking coal from the Maruwai concession was shipped to customers in Japan for the first time. Those mines were gathered into a subsidiary, Adaro Minerals Indonesia, which listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange in 2022.

How coal companies present themselves.

Coal companies rarely sell to the public, so their identity work is aimed at investors, governments, customers in power and steel, and the communities around their mines. The visual language that follows is one of scale: draglines working an open pit, haul trucks on benched slopes, trains on loading loops and ships at export terminals. Peabody’s own description of itself as a supplier of “essential products for the production of affordable, reliable energy and steel” names both of the markets those pictures serve.

Alongside the pit photography sits a second register: the land after mining. Producers publish reclamation and rehabilitation pages, biodiversity and water sections, and reports on safety and community relations. Peabody, for example, groups climate, land, water, safety, human rights and cultural heritage under one sustainability menu on its website, and says it plans progressive restoration of land disturbed by mining.

A third theme is the future of the product itself. Thermal coal for power and metallurgical coal for steelmaking are often reported as separate businesses; Peabody, for instance, lists its mines under “Seaborne Metallurgical,” “Seaborne Thermal,” “Powder River Basin” and “Other U.S.” headings. Some producers point to other energy projects; Coal India, for one, describes a solar project in Gujarat on its own website. How much weight a company gives each story varies, and the guides in this round report what each one says rather than judging it.

The most consistent document in the category is the annual report, with its maps of mines, its tables of operations and its photographs of crews and equipment. For a designer, that report is often the clearest record of how a coal company wants to be seen: the identity is less a logo than a set of repeated scenes, from the open cut to the rail line to the restored hillside.

The Adaro name goes one way, the parent another.

In 2024 the group split in two. Its thermal coal business was held under PT Alam Tri Abadi, which was renamed PT Adaro Andalan Indonesia in July 2024 and listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange in December 2024, according to Indonesian Wikipedia. On 5 December 2024, Eco-Business reported in February 2025, the group completed the spin-off of its thermal coal assets into Adaro Andalan and was renamed; afterwards the renamed parent held 15 per cent of Adaro Andalan, with Adaro Strategic Capital holding 41 per cent. Indonesian Wikipedia says that at the end of 2024 Adaro Andalan managed coal mines in South Kalimantan, one in South Sumatra and one in Australia.

The parent took the name PT Alamtri Resources Indonesia Tbk in November 2024 and styles itself AlamTri. The company says the name reflects an aim to draw value from the land, water and air of Indonesia’s natural resources, and that it has given up thermal coal mining and its supporting operations. It now organises its businesses in two pillars: AlamTri Geo, for metallurgical coal and minerals, and AlamTri Eco, for renewable energy. The company says it sells its metallurgical coal as Enviromet, through the listed subsidiary PT Alamtri Minerals Indonesia, which took that name in 2025 and which the company says is building an aluminium smelter at the Kalimantan Industrial Park Indonesia in North Kalimantan. In the same region the group is developing the Mentarang Induk hydroelectric plant, which English Wikipedia gives as 1,375 megawatts with a 2030 target. The company says its majority shareholders are four Indonesian business groups, with no single individual or entity in sole control.

For a design guide, AlamTri shows how a renamed company can hand its old name to a spin-off: the Adaro name stayed with the thermal coal business, while the parent took a new one built around land, water and air. Compare Bumi Resources, another Indonesian coal producer, and BHP, whose predecessor BHP Billiton was a partner in IndoMet Coal. For this guide we use a forest green, a river teal and a pale sky with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep AlamTri’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.