A wave of fires has engulfed Russian metal producers, – Reuters

In December, a fire broke out at the Udokan plant/Collage 24 Channel

In recent months, fires have plagued Russian metal producers. One of the latest flared up at the yet-to-be-launched Udokan plant in Transbaikalia.

As noted in the publication, this enterprise should become the largest in the country -aggressor and the world with a copper project, Reuters reported. But the elements have their own plans for this.

Fires engulfed metal producers

As the agency writes, in recent months, metal producers from Russia have suffered from a wave of fires. In particular, they occurred at an aluminum smelter, as well as at a zinc mine.

The publication emphasizes that such fires, especially during sanctions, create problems for the aggressor country in finding mining and processing equipment. And the enemy needs it in order to to replace damaged equipment.

It is interesting that the fires affected not only existing enterprises. The disaster also affected projects in progress.

Reuters writes that a fire broke out on December 30, 2023 on potentially one of the largest copper projects in Russia and the world. It is known that the elements damaged one of the buildings of the plant, which has not yet begun its work. They say that the future extraction workshop broke out there allegedly during construction work.

Interestingly, the Udokan Copper company, which is the operator of the project, refused to comment on whether fire and damage resulting from it caused a delay in the start of production at the copper cathode plant. The company only noted that they are still assessing the damage.

Please note that Udokanskaya plans to copper” launch of a hydrometallurgical plant in the second quarter of 2024. The company aims to produce up to 135 thousand tons of copper per year in the form of copper cathode or copper concentrate. At least, this is what the company said in its announcement on December 20. And from 2026, it is expected that the enterprise will produce 150 thousand tons per year.

Note that Udokan is the largest undeveloped copper deposit in Russia. At the same time, the United States has already imposed sanctions on it.

Despite this, the aggressor country places great hopes on its proximity to Asia , in particular, China. A contract with large buyers is already being discussed in the off-take format.