Russia’s third largest copper producer the Russian Copper Company plans to build a USD 160 million plant to produce nickel in the Urals region of Chelyabinsk. Russian Copper Company said that it has already started building a mine and an ore enrichment plant, Uralgidronikel at the Kulikovskaya group of nickel and cobalt deposits. The plant is designed with Nickel output of 7,000 tonnes per year and scheduled to operate in 2009. The world's top Nickel maker, Norilsk Nickel, the world's top nickel miner, produced 295,209 tonnes of Nickel in 2007. Yuzhuralnikel, Russia's second largest Nickel maker, produced 17,140 tonnes.