Moscow — PJSC MMC Norilsk Nickel, the largest palladium and refined nickel producer in the world, announces today preliminary consolidated production results for the first half 2018.
First Vice-President, Chief Operating Officer, Sergey Dyachenko commented on the 1H18 production results:
“In 1H18 we increased the output of all our key metals. In copper we delivered a solid 18% year-on-year growth owing to processing of concentrate purchased from Rostec and the launch of Bystrinsky Project. We have also stopped low-margin processing of the third-party feed and basically all refined metals in 1H18 were produced from own raw materials. In April, the first shipment of copper concentrate from Bystrinsky Project (operating in hot commissioning mode) was delivered to Chinese customers. The total output of this greenfield operation in 1H18 amounted to 5 kt of copper in concentrate. At the same time, we are decreasing our production guidance for Bystrinsky Project for 2018 due to technical issues at concentrating facilities that we plan to fix by the year end. Apart from that, we confirm our production guidance from own Russian feed for FY2018.”