Russian Platinum plans November launch of Arctic mine

MOSCOW, June 4 (Reuters) - Russian Platinum plans to start production at its Arctic polymetallic project in November, the company’s owner said on Thursday.

Currently only metals giant Nornickel produces platinum group metals in Russia.

Russian Platinum had planned to launch the first stage of the project in 2024, but postponed it due to difficulties accessing equipment amid Western sanctions.

“We expect to obtain our first output in November this year,” Musa Bazhaev said at the St Petersburg Economic Forum.

The company has licences for the Chernogorskoye deposit and the southern part of the Norilsk‑1 deposit, which contain copper‑nickel ores with high platinum group metal content mainly used in emissions‑control catalysts and electronics.

These deposits are located near Nornickel's core assets and the companies agreed in 2018 to create a PGM alliance, but it collapsed in 2020 due to opposition from Rusal, one of Nornickel’s biggest shareholders. After that, the parties signed five‑year offtake agreements in 2021 for concentrate supplies from the Chernogorsky plant to Nornickel’s Global Palladium Fund.

Nornickel, the world’s largest palladium producer with around a 40% market share, said in a market review late last year that Russian Platinum's project could add about 0.5 million ounces of palladium and 0.2 Moz of platinum to Russia's output annually.

Capital expenditure on Russian Platinum's project has already reached 500 billion roubles ($6.72 billion), Interfax reported, citing Bazhaev.

Bazhaev said a second phase of the project is expected to bring on stream the southern part of Norilsk‑1, with output reaching 15 million tons of ore and 55 tons of PGMs annually.

That would make Russian Platinum a major global supplier, Bazhaev said, but did not give a timeframe for when the second phase would start operations.

He also said Russian Platinum could return to partnership discussions with Nornickel.

($1 = 74.3500 roubles)

(Reporting by Anastasia Lyrchikova; Editing by Susan Fenton)