October 2, 2012. Ural Mining & Metallurgical Company (UMMC) feels it is only expedient to develop Yelkinskoye and Yelanskoye, the copper and nickel deposits in Voronezh Region, if the survey results indicate they contain at least 500,000 tons of S1-S2 category nickel, Prime refers to UMMC Holding Director-General Andrei Kozytsin as saying to reporters.

At the end of May 2012, Rosnedra’s tender committee declared UMMC the winner of the tender entitling the company to the development of the said deposits. The Russian Federation Government confirmed the tender results in July, allowing OOO Mednogorsky Copper & Sulphur Works to use the subsoil resources of the nationally important Yelkinskoye and Yelanskoye deposits.

‘It will be expedient to develop the deposits if the declared S1-S2 resources come to at least more than half a million tons, which is actually not a very big figure for a project like this. If the resources turn out to be less impressive, it is dubious whether it’s a good idea to develop them at all,’ Kozytsin said.

According to the businessman, the company must determine the amount of resources first, since the license originally had a token figure of 50,000 tons of nickel.

‘Of course, if the deposit happens to be only small, no one is going to develop it, given especially that ore is found at the depth of at least 260 m. If the deposit does happen to contain only 50,000 tons, which is the amount we had bid for, nobody will develop anything there. Under the terms of the tender, we must determine the amount of resources, because the forecast for the time being says R1-R2. It will take us about a year or two to complete this task,’ Kozytsin said. He added that the final decision would probably be taken in 2016.