SYKTYVKAR, February 17. /TASS/. The Pizhemskoye field in the Komi Region - the world's biggest deposit of titanium ores and silica sands - is prepared for the pilot-industrial development. The project's first stage to 2026 includes a mining enterprise at the Pyzhemskoye field in the Ust-Tsilemsky District, as well as a processing plant and a glass factory, the region's Minister of Economic Development and Industry Evgeny Ponomarenko said.

The RUSTITAN Group of Companies implements an investment project to build a vertically integrated mining and metallurgical complex to process titanium ores and silica sands at the Pizhemskoye deposit. The project is a part of the Russian Federation's Strategy for Development of the Arctic Zone and of the Komi Region's plan to diversify the economy.

"The diversification plan includes the project implementation's first stage to 2026, which is the organization of a mining enterprise at the Pyzhemskoye field in the Ust-Tsilemsky District, as well as a mining and processing plant and a glass factory to enrich silica sands near Sosnogorsk. This project favors the complex industrial development of the Komi Region's mineral resource base, as well as the task to replace earlier imported products using titanium and quartz raw materials, which are needed in the aviation, space, shipbuilding and automotive industries. Presently, the Pyzhemskoye field is prepared for the pilot development," the minister told the region's government.

According to him, in late 2022, the national patent authority, Rospatent, issued a patent to RUSTITAN for the technology, which had been developed at the Baikov's Metals and Materials Institute (IMET, the Russian Academy of Sciences). It is a technology to process quartz-leucoxene concentrates to produce artificial porous rutile, synthetic needle-shaped wollastonite and calcined quartz sand. The technology relates to titanium metallurgy and will be used for the industrial development of the Pyzhemskoye deposit.

Further works to develop the deposit will be in the framework of an integrated infrastructure mega project in the Komi and the Nenets Autonomous Regions - a national mining industrial cluster with the construction of the Indiga deep-water sea port and the Sosnovsk-Indiga railway line in the Russian Federation's Arctic zone. Presently, RUSTITAN is checking out a co-investor for further implementation of the project, the Komi Region's minister said.

About mega project

In July, 2022, the Komi Region’s Governor Vladimir Uiba said the RUSTITAN Group of Companies and the AEON Corporation jointly with the Komi Region and the Nenets Autonomous Region had started the implementation of a mega project to develop the world’s biggest Pizhemsky deposit of titanium ores and silica sands, to build a railroad between Sosnogorsk and Indiga and to build the Indiga deep-water sea port. The project will involve about a half of Komi's municipalities.

The design with necessary state examinations will take about two years, the construction - between two and three years. Investments in the vertically integrated mining and metallurgical complex at the Pizhemskoye deposit are estimated at 140 billion rubles ($1.9 billion) in 2022 prices. Those are investments in pits, processing factories, a chemical and metallurgical plant and their infrastructures. The InfraVEB Company (of the VEB state-run Corporation) has prepared detailed financial models for the three projects (the mining and metallurgical complex, the Sosnovsk-Indiga railway line, and the Indiga port). Those are public-private concession projects, and their further details will be available as the mega project proceeds, RUSTITAN's Director General Alexey Novikov said. The payback term of the mega project’s driver - the mining part - is estimated at 6.5 years, of the railroad - at 13 years.

As a result, in the Komi Region will appear a multidisciplinary production facility to make high-quality concentrates of porous rutile, zircon, iron oxide, needle-shaped wollastonite, calcined quartz sands, glass sands, titanium dioxide, as well as titanium powders. Many products are unique to Russia and are being imported. They are used in the aerospace, shipbuilding, automotive, oil and gas, paint and chemical industries.

The Pyzhemskoye field's development and the Indiga port's construction with the Sosnogorsk-Indiga railway line have been parts of development strategies in the Komi and Nenets Autonomous Regions, of the Russian Federation's Strategy for Development of the Arctic Zone.