One of Russia’s largest and most expensive mining projects of recent years has reached a major milestone. Polymetal has completed construction of a new processing plant at the Veduga gold deposit in Russia’s Krasnoyarsk Territory. After two years of stockpiling ore, the operation is now preparing to process its first material.
The project required an investment of approximately RUB 50 billion. The new concentrator is designed to process 2.2 million tonnes of ore annually. The plant features a conventional flotation flowsheet, including a crushing circuit, grinding mills, primary and secondary flotation stages, and a concentrate drying unit. The resulting gold-bearing concentrate will be transported hundreds of kilometers to the Amur Hydrometallurgical Plant in Khabarovsk Territory, where the gold will be recovered.
Mining at Veduga combines both open-pit and future underground operations. Surface mining began in 2024, and all ore extracted since then has been stockpiled near the processing plant while construction was underway. The company plans to mine 1 million tonnes of ore during the current season. The underground phase will follow later. The first stage of underground mine development was approved in September 2025, with underground production scheduled to begin in 2029.
Veduga’s resource base provides a strong long-term foundation for the project. As of the beginning of the year, the deposit contained 36.1 million tonnes of proven ore reserves, with an average gold grade of 3.7 grams per tonne, sufficient to support operations for many years.
With the commissioning of the Veduga processing plant, Polymetal is completing an integrated production chain linking two Russian regions. Concentrate produced in Siberia will be processed at the company’s hydrometallurgical facility in the Russian Far East, creating a fully operational logistics network that will become even more efficient once underground mining comes online.
Source: Polymetal
Image: Polymetal
