MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia’s Nornickel, a major producer of refined nickel and palladium, said on Tuesday it is in active talks on a joint venture in China with potential investments included in early financial plans for 2025-2026.
It gave no further details of the talks.
Two sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters in December that Nornickel and Chinese conglomerate Xiamen C&D were in discussions to create a JV in China to process Nornickel’s copper raw material into metal.
“We are currently in active negotiations with our Chinese partners, so we cannot disclose the details yet. However, we are including the relevant funds in our financial models for 2025-2026,” Nornickel’s Vice President for strategic planning Sergey Dubovitsky told a conference call.
He said announced capital investment of $2.1 billion for 2025 did not include potential investment in Chinese projects.
Nornickel has been seeking to diversify its production base establishing facilities outside Russia after it diverted most of its sales to Asian markets in the wake of Western sanctions.
While Nornickel is not subject to direct Western sanctions, the measures have prompted some Western producers to avoid buying Russian metal, complicated payments, and restricted access to Western equipment
Nornickel reported a 37% fall in 2024 net profit to $1.8 billion this week as Western sanctions and low global metals prices squeezed earnings.
Dubovitsky did not elaborate whether the financial models received the backing of the board of directors. The company said it plans to increase its capital investment in 2026-2027 but not above the level of $2.5-3.0 billion.
Nornickel, which has been seeking to reduce stocks of its metals which it could not sell due impact of Western sanctions also reiterated on Tuesday that it plans to sell its entire production in 2025.
“We do indeed plan to sell everything we produce and partially reduce the inventory with which we are entering this year,” said the company’s CFO Sergey Malyshev.
Nornickel’s billionaire President Vladimir Potanin called growth in net working capital as a result of accumulating inventories a major negative trend for the company in the recent years.
The company said on February 10 that it saw a global nickel surplus of 150,000 tons in 2025 and expected the global palladium market to be in balance this year. It aims to produce between 204,000 and 211,000 tons of nickel this year.
(Reporting by Anastasia Lyrchikova; Writing by Gleb Bryanski and Anastasia Teterevleva; Editing by Jan Harvey and David Evans)
