Nornickel restores cobalt workshop at Kola MMC with capacity of 3,000 tonnes

MOSCOW. Dec 8 (Interfax) - Nornickel has launched a cobalt workshop in Monchegorsk (Kola Mining and Metallurgical Complex or Kola MMC) after reconstruction, the company said.

The production capacity is up to 3,000 tonnes per year of metallic cobalt with a purity of 99.9%. This is the only enterprise in Russia that produces electrolyte cobalt of the highest grades. The company's investment in the project amounted to 5.3 billion rubles.

Prior to the fire in September 2022, the cobalt department of the nickel electrolysis workshop at Kola MMC had a capacity of 2,500 tonnes. After the fire, Nornickel began extracting cobalt from concentrate, allowing it to produce up to 1,000 tonnes of metallic cobalt annually and meet obligations under cobalt supply contracts, Nornickel's former senior vice president and production manager Sergei Stepanov said.

The qualitative characteristics of cobalt produced by Kola MMC allow it to be used in all areas where the metal is needed, including for batteries, catalysts, magnets and the aerospace industry. Cobalt is produced using chloride extraction-electrolysis technology developed by Nornickel specialists. It meets the most modern requirements for hydrometallurgical schemes for producing electrolyte cobalt in the world, including from an environmental standpoint, the company said.

"The production of electrolyte cobalt at Nornickel's Kola site is a unique project to create in-demand high-quality products. It will fully meet the needs of Russian consumers for this metal. It will also increase the company's economic efficiency, as it will make it possible to process cobalt concentrate into a metallic form, which is in demand in various industries," Nornickel Vice President and the director of the company's polar division Alexander Leonov was quoted as saying.

Russia is the third largest producer of cobalt in the world with a share of around 5%, significantly lagging behind the leading Democratic Republic of the Congo in this indicator (76% of world production). In 2021, cobalt production in Russia was 7,600 tonnes, compared to 120,000 tonnes in the DRC. There were plans to produce around 8,760 tonnes of cobalt in 2022, increasing output from an average of 5,000-5,500 tonnes in 2014-2017, experts from ACRA calculated. Cobalt output increased 5.1% in 2024, Rosstat said, without disclosing absolute figures.