Anastasia Lyrchikova, Polina Devitt

MOSCOW, (Reuters) – Russia’s Norilsk Nickel stated that its 2021-2030 investment plan has been increased by $6 billion to $35 Billion to take account of rising construction costs.

According to its senior vice president for strategy, this will enable the world’s biggest producer of refined nickel and palladium to increase its investment in its production infrastructure. This should help raise the group’s output by 2030.

In addition to what we already stated, “Within 10 Years we expect an increase in revenue of as high as $6 billion.” However, the majority of the growth is expected to occur after 2025. In essence, we are talking about extending the investment cycle,” Sergey Dubovitsky said to Reuters during an interview.

Vladimir Potanin, a businessman, and Rusal the aluminium producer are the largest shareholders of the mining company. They have had a long history of disagreements over Nornickel’s dividends.

The firm, which had previously been expected that its investments would reach their peak by 2026, expects the opposite to be true in 2028.

Dubovitsky indicated that Nornickel views 2021 as a transitional period after having invested an average of $1.7billion per year for the past eight.

Nornickel suggested an interim dividend in the amount of $3.2 billion. The company’s management plans to keep its dividend policy unchanged with its final payment in 2021.

The $6 billion increase in spending is due to rising costs of materials for construction projects, a result of global inflation caused by COVID-19.

Fundraising the $5 billion remaining in capital is necessary to upgrade Nornickel’s primary energy and production infrastructure. This has been on the forefront of investors’ attention after several accidents in 2020-2021.