MMC Norilsk Nickel will be spending 800 billion rubles to upgrade its production facilities, 300 billion of which will be spent on improving environmental performance.
Kola MMC will undergo a thorough retooling before 2020. One of the largest investments will go into electrolytic nickel recovery from chlorine dissolved nickel powder solutions.
Another large-scale task is to develop the only electrolytic industrial production of high-grade cobalt in Russia, in order to produce a high quality product that will be competitive on the global market.
The nitrogen-oxygen station in Monchegorsk will be modernized at a cost of 1,5 billion rubles. A similar amount will be invested in one of the largest environmental protection projects, recycling the salty effluent from a nickel refinery in the Murmansk region.
The company’s development projects have already had an impact on the environment. In 2014 the amount of sulphur dioxide emissions from all Kola MMC production facilities totaled 150 thousand tons, 46 percent lower than in 1998. The company spent more than 13 billion rubles to achieve the emissions reduction target without lowering the overall production volume.