OREANDA-NEWS. June 15, 2010. In Khibiny, Murmansk Region governor Dmitry Dmitrienko visited the industrial site of the Oleniy Ruchey mine currently under construction. The trip to the Oleniy Ruchey apatite-nepheline ore deposits developed by North-Western Phosphorous Company (NWPC) was a part of the governor’s working visit to Apatity and Kirovsk.

Dmitry Dmitrienko came by helicopter, transferred to Ural motor car and drove with NWPC management along the road recently cut to the pit area being prepared for construction. After reviewing the industrial site and the mine facilities under construction, the governor held a summary meeting in the office quarters where he met NWPC specialists for the first time last year.

The governor was impressed by the scale and progress made at Oleniy Ruchey. Infrastructure development is well underway: a road to the pit has been constructed, power lines are being installed, and hydrotechnical facilities are under construction, involving tens of kilometers of channels and hundreds of thousands of excavated cubic meters to construct dams, collectors and basins. NWPC has leased a platform at the Titan railway station, where it is assembling purchased heavy motor vehicles (three dump trucks, a loader, an excavator and a bulldozer, all by Komatsu). Soon this equipment will be involved in pit development.

Foundations are being poured for the production facilities. NWPC has put on stream a concrete-mixing plant and a crushing and screening unit to secure sand, concrete and aggregate for the construction. The number of workers involved in the construction increases on a daily basis. Twelve contracting companies are employed, most of them based in the Murmansk region. The one office building already requires expansion, and NWPC intends to construct another modular building with construction blocks that have already been delivered to the site. At the same time, the Company is also erecting a permanent office. Its investment in the mine has already exceeded RUB 2.5 bn.

Governor Dmitrienko announced that what he saw at Oleniy Ruchey was much more impressive than what he had expected and he has no doubt that the project will be a success.