In 2022, Acron Group spent RUB 437 million on nature conservation, having tripled its investment in environmental efforts.
The Group’s facilities continuously implement measures to protect air and water resources and reduce the impact of production waste.
Chairman of Acron’s Board of Directors Alexander Popov highlighted the Company’s contribution to nature conservation and environmental safety in its footprint regions. ‘In the reporting year, we focused on upgrading our facilities, improving our production processes and introducing environmentally friendly and innovative technologies’.
During the year, Acron (Novgorod region) and Dorogobuzh (Smolensk region) took measures to ensure stable and efficient operation of their production shops and gas treatment units and to comply with air emission standards.
Acron carried out technical upgrades to its biological treatment plant, and its urea, AN, NPK and nitric acid units. Similar work was done at Dorogobuzh’s main production units. The Oleniy Ruchey mine (NWPC) in Murmansk region performed air monitoring and dust suppression within its licence area, and irrigated waste dumps and roads during the dry season. In addition, NWPC monitored the quantity and quality of the industrial emissions from stationary sources.
The Group allocated RUB 121 million to reduce atmospheric emissions. As a result, the total amount of pollutants emitted by its facilities was down 11 %.
Acron and Dorogobuzh contributed to the protection of water resources by maintaining accident-free operation of their biological treatment plants and hydraulic structures: both companies overhauled their production assets and replaced worn-out equipment and pipelines. NWPC’s ecologists and environmental experts joined the national environmental projects Save the Forest, Russian Water and PaperBattle to support their biodiversity conservation and restoration initiatives. In Perm Krai, VPC is running a campaign to release juvenile fish to mitigate the impact of construction and production. VPC released approximately 21,000 baby pike into the Kama reservoir in 2022.
The Group invested RUB 229 million in reducing water pollution and remained under the permitted values for water resources protection.
Acron Group implements waste management measures every year. In 2022, it introduced new technologies to reduce waste generation, minimise non-recyclable waste and transfer it for permanent geological storage in accordance with applicable regulations.
In 2022, the Group’s waste production decreased by 17 %, while its investments in waste reduction activities totalled RUB 83 million.
In addition, Acron Group allocated RUB 3 million to developing environmental policy documentation.
All indices related to air and water pollution and waste management were below the permitted levels during the reporting year.