Nordgold is betting on bringing low-grade ores into production and building new processing capacity in Yakutia. At the Minex Russia 2026 forum, CEO Georgy Smirnov said the company intends to reach 25 tonnes of gold in the region by 2028. The growth drivers will be the Roman mining and processing plant and the “Northern Leach Pad” project at the Gross cluster.
Heap leaching makes it possible to recover metal from ore that conventional schemes consider unprofitable. The Northern Leach Pad project is built on exactly this technology. Off-balance ores with gold grades as low as 0.2 grams per tonne will go into processing. Annual volume could reach 16 million tonnes. Over the longer term, construction of a separate plant for recovering gold from solutions is not ruled out. The project has already passed the state environmental review by Rosprirodnadzor.
The second asset, the Roman mining and processing plant, is being built to develop a gold-silver deposit discovered in 2020. Reserves of 49 tonnes of gold have been recorded. The processing complex is designed for 9 million tonnes of ore per year, and the metal is planned to be recovered at the neighboring plant of the Gross mining and processing complex.
Smirnov illustrated the scale of change in the region with a story: over twenty years, the company’s output in Yakutia has grown from two to twenty tonnes of gold per year, and two large enterprises have been built. Further expansion is tied specifically to the Gross cluster.
Nordgold’s total investment in the Roman and Tokko projects was previously estimated at RUB 83.1 billion, with a completion horizon through 2041.
Nordgold shows that growth in a mature region is possible not only through new high-grade deposits. Low-grade ore processing technologies and additional capacity allow the company to maintain momentum even where the main reserves have already been mined.
Source: Nordgold
Image: Nordgold
