TEHRAN- Iran has planned to increase its annual steel production by 20 percent to 33 million tons in the current Iranian calendar year (ends on March 20, 2021).

While reaching this amount of growth is difficult considering the annual output of 27.5 million tons in the past year, it’s not impossible given the country’s performance in this sector since the beginning of the current year.

The latest report released by the World Steel Association (WSA) indicates that Iran has produced 8.49 million tons of steel ingot during the first four months of 2020, which was 4.3 percent higher than 8.139 million tons of output in the same period of time in the past year.

It is while the world’s production of steel ingot registered a drop of 4.1 percent during the first four months of this year compared to the same time span in the previous year.

The country has produced 20.226 million tons of steel ingots during the past Iranian year.

Iran’s annual steel ingot production is planned to increase 3.2 million tons in the current year, as announced by the Iranian Mines and Mining Industries Development and Renovation Organization (IMIDRO).

IMIDRO has put the value of the projects to boost the steel ingot output in the present year at $793 million.

Citing the data indicated in the World Steel Association (WSA)’s latest report, IMIDRO has also announced that the production of crude steel in Iran has risen 14.1 percent in March 2020 from March 2019.

The WSA’s report, which is on steel production by 64 countries, put Iran’s steel output at over 2.8 million tons in March.

WSA has previously announced that Iran’s crude steel production climbed 30 percent in 2019 while the average global growth in this sector stood at 3.5 percent.

According to the global organization, Iran produced 31.9 million tons of crude steel in 2019, while the figure was 24 million tons in 2018.

The data and reports released by Iranian organizations also show that the country’s steel sector is still experiencing growth in output and export despite the U.S. sanctions.

In its outlook plan for the Iranian calendar year 1404 (2025-2026) Iran has envisaged production of 55 million tons of steel per annum, and to achieve this target the country requires to produce 160 million tons of iron ore concentrates. 

Industry, Mining, and Trade Ministry has announced that production of iron ore concentrate in Iran reached 47.306 million tons in the previous Iranian calendar year, registering a four-percent rise compared to the preceding year.

The country has extracted 64.274 million tons of iron ore during the past year, according to the data released by Iranian Mines and Mining Industries Development and Renovation Organization.

In a bid to prevent the exports of unprocessed minerals, creating more value-added and meeting the requirements of domestic producers for the raw materials, Iran has levied a 25-percent duty on the exports of raw minerals (especially iron ore) since September 23, 2019.

Industry Ministry believes that the duty is going to encourage the production of more processed minerals such as pellets and concentrate instead of selling the raw minerals.

Iran’s export of steel products in the past Iranian calendar year rose 27 percent compared to its preceding year.

As reported, the country’s major steel producers managed to export about 7.33 million tons of the products in the previous year.

MA/MA