Sayanogorsk is the town that aluminium built. More than 2,000 miles from Moscow, in Russia’s Siberian hinterland, the cluster of Soviet-style housing blocks is here for one reason only: to serve the local smelter.
“Many locals survive because of this facility,” says Yevgeny Sherbakov, who manages a room in the plant filled with dozens of the ceramic-lined iron “pots” used to produce aluminium. “In the 1990s, it was like a salvation for the town.”
Aluminium has delivered relative prosperity here – but it has made the smelter’s 44-year-old owner, Oleg Deripaska, one of Russia’s super-rich. It was here, as a 25-year-old, that he began building the aluminium empire that is now UC Rusal, the world’s largest producer; photos of a youthful Mr Deripaska, now chief executive, are displayed proudly on the walls.