Designed for planning and coordinating logistics operations of the Company’s units in the Norilsk Industrial District, the new centre aims to ensure a stable supply of materials and technical resources for the facilities of the Norilsk Industrial District and capital construction projects implemented in the region.

**Nikolay Utkin at the opening of the logistics centre**

The centre was required to handle the freight volumes that keep growing as a result of the Company’s large investment projects and Norilsk renovation plans. Part of the freight arriving at Dudinka Sea Port is delivered directly to industrial facilities, while the other part is shipped to warehouses for further distribution among the consumers. Previously, freight traffic was tracked by the dispatch units of all production sites. The new logistics centre will provide an integrated and well-calibrated toolkit for managing the transportation and logistics operations.

It will focus on the day-to-day planning of production sites’ logistics, fine-tuning of freight transportation plans and forecasting of cargo traffic. The centre will exert a positive impact on freight delivery by streamlining the relevant processes, deploying different types of transport in the region, building multi-modal delivery chains and ensuring uninterrupted supplies.

**The new centre will give us an opportunity to track all freight traffic in the Norilsk Industrial District online**

To meet these objectives, the new facility will leverage information systems widely used in the transportation and logistics industries, including geolocation systems for motor and rail vehicles and automated planning tools for forecasting expected idle traffic capacity or assessing overload risks. On top of that, the centre will use video surveillance systems (some of the industrial sites are already equipped with them), production control technologies and data visualisation tools.

During the opening ceremony, Nikolay Utkin, Nornickel’s Senior Vice President and Head of Norilsk Division, emphasised that the project extends well beyond the upgrade of the existing system. “We are talking about a brand new function, as this project is going to underpin our further production digitalisation efforts. Building effective logistics chains has always been a priority for us: the remoteness of the mainland, complex shipment conditions and the short navigation period have required that we work really hard and in close partnership with each other. The transportation challenges have never been as tense as they are today. We are currently implementing a number of major investment projects in the region. Those include the Sulphur Programme, Norilsk renovation, construction of Talnakh Concentrator’s Stage 3, and others. The new logistics centre will facilitate planning and help coordinate all of Norilsk Division’s logistics operations, as we will be able to track freight traffic online via the control screens, get quick access to all the necessary statistics, improve our forecasting processes and manage shipment volumes and schedules,” said Nikolay Utkin.

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