Despite the establishment of its new global marketing strategy, Norilsk Nickel will not seek to compete with South African platinum suppliers to the important Chinese market.

The company's deputy general director Victor Sprogis said to Platts in Moscow that 'for sales of platinum to the Chinese jewellery industry, we will not develop this very actively, as this direction is actively developed by our South African colleagues.

'Although this sector develops dynamically, we will keep our presence there, but not more than that.

'We would like to have equal distribution of our pgm exports between the European, US and Asian markets, as we consider these markets to be of about the same importance for the company.'

Expressing a preference for dealing with 'reliable partners', specifically 'end users, such as producers of auto components', Mr Sprogis said he would rather deal with people 'who would not speculate with pgm, but are more interested in longer-term stability'.

Negotiations with end-users in China and Korea continued, he said, but 'there are no signed contracts for periods longer than a year.'