Norilsk Nickel says it will boost production, cut emissions
Nickel mining will over the next two years be boosted and emissions at the same time radically cut, General Director of the Norilsk Nickel Vladimir Strzhalkovsky said when visiting Zapolyarny, the mining and metallurgy town located near the border to Norway.
During his visit to the Kola Peninsula last week, Norilsk Nickel CEO Vladimir Strzhalkovsky said that mining in the underground “Severny Gluboky” will increase from today’s 4,7 million tons per year to 6,9 million tons by the end of 2011. The Severny Gluboky mine is now the company’s main production source in the region.
A total of three billion RUB will be invested in the region only in 2010, Strzhalkovsky said, MBnews.ru reports.
The powerful industrial leader also maintained that emissions from the plant facilities in Zapolyarny will be cut by 95 percent. That is expected to happen by the end of 2011, when the new roasting plant will be completed, as BarentsObserver reported earlier.
Meanwhile, there are reported no news about the fate of the company’s smelter in the nearby town of Nikel, which pollutes more than the double of the current facilities in Zapolyarny.
Norilsk Nickel, the world’s biggest producer of nickel and a major producer of cupper and several other metals, remains a major polluter in Russia. As BarentsObserver reported yesterday, the neglect of the environment is the reason why the Norwegian Government Pension Fund is excluding the company from its portfolio.
Norilsk Nickel leader Strzhalkovsky during his two-day stay in Murmansk Oblast also visited the town of Monchegorsk, the company’s other main industrial centre in the region.
