MOSCOW, March 20. /TASS/. The Norilsk Nickel Company (Nornickel) will install digital centers for planning and monitoring at all its mines in the Krasnoyarsk Region’s north, Director of the Company’s Polar Division Nikolai Utkin told reporters during opening of an operations center at the Komsomolsky mine on Friday.
The digital centers are used to plan and control online mining works round the clock to model best modes for technology processes and to prevent hazardous and emergency situations. The first center of the kind opened at the Oktyabrsky mine in 2019. A similar center entered service at the Komsomolsky mine in March.
"Another center is to open at the Taimyrsky mine, and parallel to it we have been working on the project to set up such a center at the Nadezhda Metallurgical Plant. <…> This year, we plan [to install such a center] at the Taimyrsky mine, later, in the first quarter of 2021 — at the Nadezhda Metallurgical Plant, and then at the Skalisty mine," the director said. "In 2021, all the enterprises will have such multi-functional centers."
Investments in such centers will make 400 million rubles ($5 million), the company told TASS. Construction of the center at the Komsomolsky mine began in September 2019 and continued to March 2020. Investments made 172 million rubles ($2.2 million).
Norilsk Nickel is a diversified mining and metallurgical company, the world’s largest producer of refined nickel and palladium and a leading producer of platinum, cobalt, copper and rhodium. The company also produces gold, silver, iridium, selenium, ruthenium and tellurium. The company’s units are located at the Norilsk Industrial District, on the Kola Peninsula and in the Chita Region in Russia as well as in Finland and South Africa.
The company’s Polar Division unites the Taimyrsky, Oktyabrsky, Komsomolsky, Skalisty and Mayak mines, as well as the Nadezhda Metallurgical Plant and the Talnakh and Norilsk Concentrators.