RUSSIA’S largest mining company MMC Norilsk Nickel expects platinum and palladium production to decline this year due to lower ore grades.
Palladium output could fall as much as 11% to 2.4 million ounces, whilst platinum production may drop about eight percent to 616,000 oz, said Bloomberg News citing the company, known as Nornickel. The decline comes as both precious metals have more than doubled in price over the past 12 months, the newswire added.
Evgeniy Fedorov, COO, said the projected fall was due to a “change in the metal composition of processed raw materials”.
Nornickel, the world’s largest palladium producer, is not under Western sanctions, but penalties imposed on Russia since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine have restricted the company’s access to equipment traditionally sourced from the US, Europe and their allies, said Bloomberg News. That contributed to last year’s decline in copper and nickel production of two percent and three percent, respectively.
The company is working through lower-grade deposits over the next two to three years. Nickel-equivalent output is expected to rebound by about 20% by 2030, when Nornickel begins processing richer ore, billionaire CEO Vladimir Potanin said in a December interview with state television.
Potanin added that output also dropped after the miner replaced Western mining equipment with Chinese and Belarusian machinery, which was initially less advanced and productive.
