TEHRAN – The World Steel Association (WSA), in its latest annual report, announced that the production of crude steel in Iran rose 8.8 percent in May 2023, from May 2022.

The report said that Iran produced 3.3 million tons of crude steel in May of this year.

Iran’s crude steel production also increased by 2.2 percent to 13 million tons in the first five months of 2023, as compared to the same period of time in the past year.

The Iranian Steel industry has been constantly developing over the past years against all the pressures and obstacles created by outside forces like the U.S. sanctions and the coronavirus outbreak that has severely affected the performance of the world’s top producers.

In early February, the WSA reported that Iran’s crude steel production increased by eight percent in 2022 when the production by the world’s top 64 steelmakers declined by 4.2 percent.

Iran was ranked first among the world’s top steel producers in terms of production growth in the previous year.

Based on the WSA data, Iran produced 30.6 million tons of crude steel in the mentioned year.

Meanwhile, WSA stated that crude steel production by the world’s top 64 producers fell 4.2 percent to stand at 1.787 billion in 2022.

Production by Europe’s major steel producers also declined significantly last year so that Germany’s production declined by 8.4 percent, Italy experienced negative growth of 11.6 percent, France’s output declined by 13.1 percent, Spain registered a negative 19.2 percent growth and the UK a 15.6 percent decline in steel production.

According to the World Steel Association, Iran was the world’s 10th top steel producer over the past two years, after countries like China, India, Japan, and Russia.

The country is expected to climb to seventh place among the world’s top steel producers by the Iranian calendar year 1404 (March 2025).

MA