More than 3 km of underground workings have been completed at the Karnasurt mine in the Murmansk region since the beginning of 2026. Lovozersky GOK, part of Rosatom's Mining Division, continues to prepare new mining areas to ensure the enterprise's operation in 2027.
According to Vladimir Fedyakov, General Director of Lovozersky GOK, miners still have to cover another 828 m in different directions to achieve the required production volumes. After that, it is planned to prepare 12 new stoping blocks — sections of the mine where mineral extraction is directly carried out.
Work is underway at the underground Karnasurt mine, where loparite ore is extracted. In 2025, three new stoping blocks were introduced there, and the 17th eastern ore drift, 3 km long, was restored. This provided access to loparite ore reserves on the eastern flank of the deposit, necessary to fulfill the 2026 production plan.
In parallel, the enterprise is studying the southwestern flank of Karnasurt. The geological service of Lovozersky GOK estimates its reserves at 5.2 million tons of ore, and the start of tunneling to prepare the site is scheduled for November–December 2026.
Loparite concentrate from Lovozersky GOK is supplied to the Solikamsk Magnesium Plant. There, tantalum, niobium, and titanium are extracted from the raw materials, and rare earth metal concentrates are also obtained. Therefore, the expansion of the underground front of Karnasurt is associated not only with maintaining production at the mine itself but also with providing raw materials for subsequent stages of Russian processing.