MOSCOW, August 8. /TASS Correspondent Anastasiya Davydenko/. Russia actively develops industrial tourism offering visits to mining and metallurgical enterprises. Here is a TASS report from the country's northernmost city Norilsk - about knowledge obtained underground, about how operates a world leader in non-ferrous and precious metals, and about how industrial tourism is developing in the country's north.
North's attraction is tourism!
According to the Russian Union of Travel Industry, over the first half of 2025, the number of tours sold to the Putorana Plateau in the Krasnoyarsk Region is bigger than the number of tours sold within the entire year 2024. Southern Taymyr offers guided tours to industrial assets in the biggest non-ferrous metals center. A TASS correspondent was lucky to visit two facilities of the Norilsk Nickel Company: the Anhydrite Mine of the Kayerkansky Mine and a corporate Training Center.
How it all started: about the Norilsk Plant
This year, the company – Russia's biggest producer of non-ferrous metals - is 90 years old. The plant was established on June 23, 1935, but the company celebrates its birthday on Metallurgist's Day which coincides with the Norilsk City Day.
'I observe industrial safety!'
Industrial tourism programs are maximum close to real work of miners, thus our tour began with a mandatory safety briefing. Walls in the administrative buildings are decorated with cute drawings by the employees' children. I was impressed by a boy's drawing telling dad: "Come back home to me."
As for safety, Nornickel's enterprises pay priority attention to it. The "dungeon employees" wear uniform with a chevron on the chest, reading "I observe industrial safety." While on the tour, we could hear at least a dozen times from every miner we met: "At all times, be that for photos, wear helmets and glasses."
Our first stop on the route was the corporate university - an operating educational site to train future and current employees.
A three-level tower, that is a metal structure that looks like a children's dollhouse, serves to teach emergency response at altitude, though underground. The corporate university employees have hung up a robot dummy, Gosha, onto the tower - to ease tension at upcoming exams, they said. However, they laughed, Gosha had failed safety instructions at due time.
Why would industrial company care for tourism?
Director of Norilsk Nickel's Social Policy Department Irina Zhuykova told TASS about special attention the company is paying to promoting the North's unique nature, to changing the image from industrial to tourist and recreational, and to building up the region's investment and tourist attractiveness.
The company goes in line with goals of priority national projects, including those aimed at increasing the number of domestic tourists and at developing tourism potential of the Arctic and the Far North.
Further on, we climbed to the highest point on the tower, from where we managed to "evacuate". It looked like a bungee flight - this is exactly how it may happen in reality (ideally, of course, is to avoid situations of the kind).
The tower is used for training in working at height, as well as in fire safety. As well as for training specialists in professions about which very few could ever heard: slag workers, electrician mechanics, fasteners, electrolysis workers, emulsifiers, and others.
After the evacuation from a height, we approach a converted marine container that has a 3D simulator of a loading and delivery vehicle. This machine is an evolutionary replacement for hand collection of mined rock.
Modern technologies give a feeling I am driving that loading vehicle: I calculate the mining height, put the rock into the bucket and roll it out of the site.
What mine roadway is about?
A mine roadway is an artificially created space in the earth. It may be horizontal, vertical and inclined. Mine roadways are created to extract and transport minerals, to ventilate mines and to drain groundwater. In other words, a mine roadway is an underground road.
After passing the simulators, the company's employees are allowed to work, while we, the tour participants, have gained emotions, since it's not every day that you may fly off a training tower and descend underground at the same time, be that even in virtual reality.
To the plant!
The tour's second location was an operating mine to extract anhydrite (a while mineral, used in mixtures for filling mine voids) at the Kayerkansky Mine.
That day, once again, started with safety instructions. The tour participants again received overalls, helmets, glasses, gloves and respirators. We headed outside the city, to the foot of Mount Schmidtikha, where the Norillag camp was located at the very beginning of Norilsk's history. The camp operated between 1935 and 1953.
Anhydrite
On the way to the Anhydrite mine, we learned how the Taymyr land was developing since the 17th century and, of course, about the decision to create the Norilsk Plant, and about its 90-year-long history.
Have a strong roof!
This time, instead of a classic safety briefing, we watched a video with motivation from famous actors, such as Dmitry Kharatyan, who at the end of the briefing stressed Russia is proud of miners and thanked them for the hard work they are doing.
An important tradition is a phrase that everyone, without exception, says before the shift starts: "Have a strong roof!"
Miners live in their own world underground and use their own language. The roof is the ceiling, the sides are the walls, and the soil is the earth. Hence the above phrase.