Maria Lavrinovich:

"We create the image of the metal"

by Alexey Sivets
My acquaintance to Maria Lavrinovich took place in the course of her BIO-page construction. The potential member of our community brought a collection of elephants from all over the world to Face Gallery photo session. Snow-white smile, unrestrained laughter, black tight-fitting dress, charming look and light coquetry. “Maria, what do you do?”, - I inquired. The answer was: “Strategic marketing of “Norilsky Nickel” The image of a society lioness vanished just like a fog. The elephants fell to the side. “How very interesting”, - slipped from me. “It really is. I work at “Palladium” program”, - Maria endowed me with a measuring eye. We exchanged glances with the photographer and it seemed just for a second that one and the same idea occurred to us: “Here is she – Miss Flapper”.

— Maria, how has it happened that you have embarked on heavy industry sphere?

— This heavy industry, as you call it, does not leave its imprint on palladium development program. Our colleagues even use to internally call us a “glamorous nook”. I think I was destined to get involved into the project. No doubt I’ve always run genius projects, they all being as multy-aspect as I am. But that was in “Norilsky Nickel” where my experience, my knowledge and skills merged into one. “That is it!” – occurred to me one day. And I was right.

— Why is palladium considered to be the metal of the future?

— Well, gold a priori has thousands of years of promotion. People nearly swear gold from the beginning of times. The state has got its gold-value store on purpose. However, apart from gold, there are five more metals of the platinum group: palladium, rhodium, ruthenium, osmium and iridium, palladium being the only metal, which can be met in its pure form in nature.

Few people know that the price for rare metal rhodium is manifold as high as that of gold and platinum. All self-respecting jewelry brands have their products covered with a thin sputtering of rhodium, which makes them that glossy. White gold lacks this characteristic. Nowadays palladium is not merely an investment project, but an integral part of many industrial branches, the jewelry one being not an exception. As a matter of fact platinum and palladium have always been interchangeable. Palladium possesses almost all characteristics of platinum however being unique for its hypoallergenicity as well as the ability to disengage hydrogen. Well, the latter is highly important taking into consideration the current ecological situation. Moreover hydrogen energetics is the thing of the future. RSA specialists spent a great deal of time, resources and efforts to turn a plate into its present status. Again few people know that there had been no white gold up to the middle of the XX century. These were the times when platinum cost five times as little as it does nowadays, playing no role in jewelry industry.