According to Karelsky Okatysh's business plan, investment into technical upgrading and additional construction at the mining plant will total 419 million rubles.

Karelsky Okatysh began a large scale investment program to supply the iron pellet plant with high capacity machinery. Karelsky Okatish has already received two 136-tone dump truck Caterpilla 785C. It is yet to receive seven more such vehicles. Five of them will arrive in March-April.

Dump trucks Caterpillar 785C were shipped by a German company Zeppelin within a contract signed in December 2001 on preferential terms, which were not offered to any other Russian company. The contract value is US $ 10 million to be paid in installments over several years.

Karelsky Okatysh and Caterpillar have positive experience of working together. Last year the mining plant received a large wheel loader made by Zeppelin.

"Caterpillar dump trucks meet our technical requirements, and are economical as compared to dump trucks of other brands By means of purchasing them we intend to unify our transportation machinery that works in the open pit. It will allow us to optimize expenses on spare parts and service materials, which will increase the productivity of machinery. Besides, in the beginning of 2003, Zeppelin will establish a service center for its dump trucks in Kostomuksha, which will create additional jobs," said Oleg Mikhailov, Karelsky Okatysh's general director.

In 2002, Karelsky Okatysh plans to produce 6.8 million tonnes of iron pellets, which is 3% more than in 2001. This year Karelsky Okatysh also intends to maintain the volume of stripping rock at the level of 2001. In order to achieve that, Karelsky Okatysh in 2002 will remove 6 m2 of mining mass. Similar volumes were removed only twice in its life time in the mid eighties. Then the amount of transportation was twice of what is used today. Karelsky Okatysh pays special attention to increasing effectiveness of its equipment, buying new and highly productivie machinery. In 2002, productivity of dump trucks is to increase by 8%.