Polyus Gold

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Polyus

Type	Joint stock
Founded	1980
Headquarters
Key people	Hazret Sovmen, Founder Yevgeny Ivanov, CEO
Industry	Mining Metallurgy
Products	Gold
Website	http://www.polyusgold.com

Polyus Gold (MICEX:PLZL RTS:PLZL) (Russian: По́люс Зо́лото, Polyus Zoloto) is a Russian mining and metallurgy company primarily concerned with the production of gold. Polyus is the largest gold producer in Russia.

In 1990 Polyus was restructured as a closed joint stock company, then went public. It is part of the Interros holding. The company's stock is traded on the RTS and MICEX exchanges in Russia and on New York's OTC stock exchange, as well as on the London Stock Exchange as ADRs. The company was worth about nine billion dollars by the end of 2006.

[edit] History and operations

Polyus was founded in 1980 by Hazret Sovmen and began working the Olympiad gold field. In 1994 the company obtained the mining license to operate the Olympiada mine. Two years later smelting operations began.

Lenzoloto, located in the Bodaybo region, was formed in 1921 by the nationalization of over 400 exgtant gold producers in Siberia. In 2003, Lenzoloto joined Polyus group.

One year after the discovery of gold in Natalka, the Matrosov Mine was founded. In 2004, after joining the Polyus Group, the mine's resources were reappraised and a new open-pit mine was planned upon. The company estimates that Matrosov will become the largest gold field in Russia by 2010.

Polyus operates the following gold mining facilities:

Krasnoyarsk Krai – the large Olympiada deposit; Blagodantoye, Titimukhta, Tyrada, Oleny, Razdolinskaya, Zyryanovskaya, and Panimba fields.
Irkutsk Oblast – Zapadnoye, Verninskoye, Pervenets, and Chyortovo Koryto and Mukodek goldfields as well as some 94 placer deposits.
Magadan Oblast – giant Natalka deposit and smaller Degdekan and Vostochnoye fields.
Sakha Republic (Yakutia) - Kuranakh ore body and Kyutchus field; 50% interest in the giant Nezhdaninskoye field.
Amur Oblast – Bamskoye gold field.

All those assets have been consolidated by MMC Norilsk Nickel and spun off in 2005 as a separate company still controlled by Interros.

Gold production in 2005 was 33.5 tons, or about one million ounces. The company holds 25.1 million ounces of gold in proven and probable reserves. The company estimates that it has 76.8 million ounces of gold resources.

The company's website states that "producing a ton of gold creates 1000 jobs."