Addressing Nornickel’s team, the President’s letter reads: “Thank you for your active role in organising and holding Year of the Environment events in Russia.”

2017 was Russia’s Year of the Environment. It kicked off in January with the opening of a visitor centre at the Pasvik Reserve, which is located at the border of Russia, Norway and Finland. Nornickel provided active support for the project.

During the year, the Company held a number of environmental events across its footprint. Thousands of its employees participated in the Let’s Do It environmental marathon. In October, Nornickel hosted in Krasnoyarsk its sixth Environmental Protection and Industrial Activity in the North ecological conference in partnership with the Siberian Federal University (SibFU) and the Research Institute for Environmental Problems.

Three Nornickel projects were included on the list of key Year of the Environment initiatives approved by the Russian Government’s Directive of 2 June 2016. One of them was the Company’s largest environmental initiative — the Sulphur Project, which was designed to drastically reduce sulphur dioxide emissions in the Norilsk Industrial District. Its official launch on 3 July 2017 was attended by Sergei Donskoy, Minister of Natural Resources and Environment, and Sergei Ivanov, a Special Presidential Representative. They participated in the opening of the project’s showroom and looked at the technical and technological solutions.

The second Nornickel project included on the list was the commissioning of a sulphite/bisulphite solution unit with a view to supplying Polar Divison’s processing facilities with sulphite/bisulphite reagents, as the obsolete Nickel Plant was shut down in 2016. The commissioned unit is expected to reduce sulphur dioxide emissions across the Company’s facilities by 11,590 tpa.

Finally, the third initiative on the list was the reconstruction of an off-gasses removal system aimed at achieving better conditions for the dispersion of sulphur dioxide in the Norilsk Industrial District.

Vladimir Putin thanks Nornickel for Year of Environment contributions with letter of gratitude