Foreign banks refuse to work with Norilsk Nickel, despite the fact that the company is not directly affected by Western sanctions. This was announced on Friday by Anton Berlin, vice president of the largest mining and metallurgical holding in Russia, which is the world leader in the production of nickel and palladium.

“We have quite a few banks that refuse to accept and transfer money as payment for Russian products. Almost all the largest banks refuse transfers to Russia,” Berlin said on a direct line with Norilsk Nickel employees. He added that service providers, warehouses, ports, and shipowners are also refusing to cooperate. “We have to rebuild the entire sales system... Now we are faced with a large number of external restrictions,” Reuters quotes the top manager.

At the end of last year, Norilsk Nickel reported a two-fold drop in net profit, to $2.87 billion, as well as a reduction in the production of key metals: nickel by 5%, to 209 thousand tons, and palladium by 4%, to 2.692 million ounces.

Norilsk Nickel has to sell metals at a discount, although “not always,” Berlin said. “Some of our customers, primarily European, voluntarily refuse Russian metals and even products obtained from Russian raw materials, for example, at our Finnish plant. Some are ready to use Russian metals, but only buy not from a company that is part of a Russian group, but from someone independent,” said the top manager.

According to reports published in early February, last year the share of the European market in Norilsk Nickel's revenue decreased from 47% to 24%, while the share of Asia, on the contrary, increased from 31% to 54%. Total revenue fell 15% to $14.4 billion.