Despite a difficult year, Norilsk Nickel still remains among the top 5 investment-attractive companies in Russia thanks to its investment program, said Nikolay Utkin, Senior Vice President of Norilsk Nickel and head of the Norilsk division, in an interview with the Klyuch – Severny Gorod TV channel.
"In 2023, we did not cut any [expenditures], moreover, we increased our investment, initiated and continued with projects. In 2023, the investments amounted to over 450 billion rubles. First of all, the Sulfur Program is our flagship [project], which is why we took the first place this year as an attractive company in terms of ESG and ecology in the nomination "Technology of the Future". This is very important for the company," Utkin pointed out.
"Of course, an important component is related to the infrastructure projects. Among them a new deposit, the Mokulaevsky open-pit mine, where the company has invested over 22 billion rubles. If we only talking about the first line [of the project], capital investments in the "Sulfur Program" amounted to over 180 billion rubles."
The vice president of Norilsk Nickel called ore processing at the Talnakh factory another very important area, where investments in production modernization have already amounted to almost 40 billion rubles.
"Let's not forget about the great activity and our investments in social development, renovation of Norilsk, urban infrastructure projects, where over 200 billion [rubles] were also invested," added the head of the Norilsk division of the company.
Speaking about the Sulfur Program, which was launched in October 2023, Utkin said that the process of developing technologies and design solutions that were laid down is now underway.
"Already in 2024, the first line will reduce the burden on the urban environment. Namely, [we plan to] recycle over 440,000 tons of SO2. This is more than a quarter of all emissions at the Norilsk Metallurgical Plant. The second and third lines will already allow us to recycle over 900,000 tons of sulfur dioxide per year. On the scale of the federal Clean Air project, which includes our Sulfur Program, this will already be the disposal of over a quarter of sulfur dioxide emissions throughout the country," Utkin said.
Norilsk Nickel is implementing another environmental project named Clean Norilsk. In two years, 330 old buildings were dismantled, three million square meters of territory were cleared and 80 hectares of these lands were reclaimed. The company started to provide these services to the city of Norilsk in 2023.
Utkin also spoke about the new initiatives of the Norilsk division: "The first methane refueling station has appeared in Norilsk, and the first [gas-powered] KAMAZ trucks are already undergoing test mode. That is, we are also gasifying our transport here. And this is a very important area of the ESG agenda in the environmental aspect."
Alex Shishlo for Rough&Polished
