Norilsk Nickel, the world’s largest producer of refined nickel and palladium, submitted its 2020 Sustainability Report to the expert community on May 26. Nornickel’s top managers, representatives of federal ministries, regional administrations, and non-profit NGOs attended the presentation as experts and speakers. 

The company also presented a white paper on industrial incidents. The document discusses the causes of the recent incidents, the company’s measures to mitigate and eliminate their consequences and organisational changes intended to prevent similar incidents in the future.

The experts praised the Company’s efforts to implement sustainability principles, noting the importance of the steps taken: the development of an environmental strategy, commitment to support the regions of operations, revision of the risk management model, in particular climate-related risks, improvement of organisational structure and introduction of rigorous environmental performance indicators for the management team.

The presentation took place a day after Nornickel was announced the winner of the Russian Business Leaders competition held by the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs in the Sustainability Reporting Excellence category.

Andrey Bougrov in his opening remarks said: “Summing up the results of 2020, it should be noted that Nornickel has retained its leading position among mining and metallurgical companies in the area of occupational health and safety. The Company maintained high standards of social support for its employees and did not allow layoffs amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The risk management system has been substantially revised. One of our most significant achievements in sustainable development in 2020 was the development of the new integrated environmental strategy.

UN Goodwill Ambassador Vyacheslav Fetisov commented: “Nornickel was one of the first to embrace the modern challenges of climate change and start working in this direction. I often visit Norilsk, most recently a couple of months ago. Once again, I am convinced that the Company has a long-term business vision. And it is already being implemented. I was impressed and pleased to see the construction of the Sulphur Project facilities, in which the company is investing 250 billion roubles”.

Alexey Knizhnikov Environmental Responsibility Programme Manager at the World Wildlife Fund commented: "I would like to elaborate on Nornickel’s White Paper on the lessons of last year’s accident. While the accident was a serious one, we were very pleased with the way the clean-up work was organised and the way all the stages of the clean-up were communicated. We have not seen anyone else being so open and accessible, both in terms of the original data on the spill and on the clean-up process, and in terms of the company’s dialogue with stakeholders. We are even beginning to cite Nornickel as a benchmark for how accidents should be handled”.

(IRuniverse)

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