Nornickel Cuts Q3 Nickel Output 4% and Copper 7%, Reaffirms Adjusted 2025 Guidance

MMC Norilsk Nickel (Nornickel), the metals group headquartered in Moscow, Russia, produced 53,550 tonnes of nickel in the third quarter of 2025, down 4% year-on-year, the company said in a production report published on October 23, 2025.

Copper output fell faster: 100,100 tonnes, 7% below the same quarter of 2024. The company attributed the decline to two operational factors — a higher share of disseminated ores in the mined mix, and the need to restock work-in-progress material.

Q3 2025 and the nine-month picture

The quarterly numbers sit inside a broader nine-month trend. Between January and September 2025, copper production fell 4% year-on-year to 313,000 tonnes, with the Trans-Baikal Division contributing 52,000 tonnes, slightly less than a year earlier. Platinum-group metals moved in the same direction:

• palladium — 617,000 ounces in Q3 2025, down 9% from 676,000 ounces a year earlier, and 2.016 million ounces over the nine months, down 6%;
• platinum — 149,000 ounces in Q3 2025, down 10% from 165,000 ounces, and 484,000 ounces over the nine months, down 7%.

Three reasons behind the adjustment

Yevgeny Fyodorov, Nornickel's First Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer, framed the decline as temporary and operational rather than market-driven. In his words, output of all key metals decreased slightly in the nine months, and the adjustment was driven by:

1. a temporary decline in ore output owing to the gradual transition to new mining equipment at the Polar Division as part of the import substitution program;
2. a change in the composition of mined ore — an increased share of disseminated ores;
3. the need to restock work-in-progress material.

The equipment transition is the structural part of the story: replacing a mining fleet is a multi-quarter process, and while new machines are commissioned, ore supply to the concentrators runs below nameplate.

Guidance reaffirmed after the mid-year reset

Alongside the quarterly figures, Nornickel reiterated its full-year 2025 production guidance in the version adjusted in the middle of the year:

• nickel — 196,000-204,000 tonnes, against the previous forecast of 204,000-211,000 tonnes;
• copper — 343,000-355,000 tonnes, previously 353,000-373,000 tonnes;
• copper concentrate at the Trans-Baikal Division — 66,000-70,000 tonnes, unchanged;
• palladium — 2.677-2.729 million ounces, about 1% below the previous range of 2.704-2.756 million ounces;
• platinum — 645,000-662,000 ounces, about 2.2% below the previous 662,000-675,000 ounces.

Reaffirming the ranges rather than cutting them again signals management's view that the Q3 dip is contained within the boundaries already disclosed in mid-2025.

Value-added lines restart at the Kola Site

The same report carried two positive operational notes. The carbonyl nickel department inside the nickel electrolysis shop at the Kola Site was successfully launched after annual scheduled capital maintenance and is producing value-added products. Separately, following reconstruction works, the cobalt metal production facility has started to ramp up.

What to watch next

Two questions frame the rest of the year. First, whether the Polar Division's equipment transition restores ore supply fast enough for the fourth quarter to land inside the reaffirmed ranges. Second, whether the value-added restarts — carbonyl nickel and cobalt — begin to show up as a product-mix effect rather than a footnote. The company's own production disclosures, as reported by Interfax and its companion report on platinum-group metals, give the baseline against which the full-year result will be judged.