NORILSK, Russia, Feb 1 (Reuters): Russia's financial crisis is posing a stark challenge to the country's largest mining company. How can Norilsk Nickel protect the living standards of thousands of workers cut off inside the inhospitable Arctic while also satisfying its shareholders?
The slump in the rouble and a resulting rise in inflation could have an outsize effect in Norilsk, a town 300 km inside the Arctic Circle where more than a quarter of the 220,000 population work for the company, and it's hard to shop around.
Winter temperatures in Norilsk plunge to levels that visitors can find distinctly uncomfortable, but for the isolated workers who live there any hint of a rise in the cost of living is equally unwelcome.
With the rouble down 50 per cent against the dollar since early last year and Russian food inflation above 15 per cent, it falls partly to the company to bear the cost of holding down prices in the grimy industrial city where it is based.
Norilsk Nickel, the world's largest producer of nickel and palladium, owns a loss-making chain of seven shops called "Sunflower", which have sold staples such as milk and bread more cheaply than other stores in the city since 2011.
The company also helps other retailers bring food supplies to the city and subsidises their transport costs. It increased its workers' salaries on Jan. 1 and plans another review on April 1, said Vladimir Potanin, chief executive and co-owner.
"We are doing our best to compensate for increases (in food prices)," said Potanin, Russia's 8th richest man.
But prices have still jumped. Sugar prices rose 17 per cent, month-on-month, in the city's shops in December, compared with 14 per cent in the rest of Russia, while eggs jumped 23 per cent, according to official figures.
Gennady Poltorikhin, the head of a local sled-dog sport federation and a breeder of huskies, said steeper price rises may lie ahead in Norilsk.
"We are consuming products that were brought in during the autumn," he said, and the seven "Sunflower" stores were too few to have much impact on prices in a large town.
