The open joint stock company Norilsky Nickel Mining and Metallurgical Company has production facilities on four continents in six countries: Russia, Australia, Botswana, Finland, the United States and South Africa.
Norilsky Nickel is the world's largest producer of nickel (over 18% of world output), palladium (more than 50%), one of the largest producers of platinum (about 13%) and copper (about 2.5%). The company's by-products include cobalt, chrome, rhodium, silver, gold, iridium, ruthenium as well as selenium, tellurium and sulfur. The core activities of its enterprises include prospecting, exploration, mining, enrichment and the processing of minerals, production, marketing and the sale of non-ferrous and precious metals.
Nickel and copper production increased to 57,100 tons and 95,000 tons respectively in the second quarter of this year.
The company's earnings in 2009 stood at $10.2 billion compared with $13.9 billion in 2008. Net profits stood at $2.7 billion against losses at $555 million a year earlier.
Recent years have witnessed a reduction in the mineral raw materials base for nickel production due to natural depletion as well as the underfunding for geological prospecting and projects of introducing new fields, modernization and the introduction of modern technology in the last few years.
Faced with this situation the company has had to increase spending for reproduction and expansion of the resource base every year. In 2010-2011 it will spend 143.4 billion roubles to launch new fields on the Taimyr and Kola Peninsulas. A 68.1 billion rouble public-private partnership scheme will develop mineral resources in the area east of Lake Baikal. Most of the employees of the company's Russian enterprises work in Norilsk and in the Taimyr (Dolgano-Nenetsky) municipal area. The average number of employees was about 79,000 and the average monthly pay about 60,000 roubles as of July 31, 2010.
There were no redundancies: indeed in 2009 more than 6,300 people were hired. Most of the newly hired workers are young people.
The company's spending on social programmes in 2009 stood at 2.24 billion roubles. The target for 2010 is 3.3 billion roubles.