The new strategy, which will be presented in October this year, will touch on all aspects of the company`s activities, including investment priorities, staff policy and dividend practices, General Director Vladimir Potanin says in an interview published by newspaper Gazeta Pechenga.
According to Potanin, the new strategy will include also the company`s environmental programmes and a «serious investment plan on cuts of sulphure dioxide emissions».
As previously reported, the city of Norilsk, the company`s headquarters, is the place with the by fra biggest emissions in Russia. According to a survey recently presented by RIA Novosti, the city of Norilsk in 2012 emitted a total of 1,96 million tons of polluting gases into the atmosphere, more than twice as much as the second-biggest polluting city in the country. Also in Northwest Russia, the company is among the biggest pollutors. In Pechenga, the municpality bordering Norway and Finland, company subsidiary Kola GMK in 2012 emitted more 113,3 thousand tons.
According to company Director Potanin, new technology will enable the company to resolve its emission challenges «almost completely» in the course of this decade.
The new strategy comes at a time when the company is experiencing major cuts in profits following lower prices on the international markets. In the first six months of 2013, the company`s net profits dropped to 20,7 billion rubles (€472 million), down 58 percent from the same period in 2012, newspaper Vedomosti reports.
