TEHRAN – The World Steel Association (WSA), in its latest annual report, has ranked Iran second among the world’s top sponge iron-producing countries in 2022, IRNA reported.

Based on the WSA data, the Islamic Republic managed to produce 32.9 million tons of sponge iron in 2022 to stand at second place after India with 42.3 million tons of production.

According to WSA, Iran also kept its place as the world’s 10th largest steel producer last year, with 30.6 million tons of crude steel output.

Iranian Mines and Mining Industries Development and Renovation Organization (IMIDRO) was also reported to be the world’s 20th largest company based on the WSA ranking.

The total global production of crude steel in 2022 was 1,301,300,000 tons while the consumption of this product in the world was 1,301,400,000 billion tons.

Earlier, WSA in its monthly report for April ranked Iran eighth among the world’s top steel-producing countries for the mentioned month, indicating a one-place rise compared to the previous month.

The April report showed that Iran’s crude steel output increased 5.9 percent in the mentioned month while the global average growth rate stood at – 2.4 percent.

Based on the WSA data, Iran produced 3.1 million tons of crude steel in April.

Meanwhile, the Islamic Republic produced 9.7 million tons of steel in the first four months of 2023, registering a 0.1 percent growth compared to the same period in the previous year.

WSA report said that the world’s 64 steel producers managed to produce 161.4 million tons of the commodity in April, 2.4 percent less than the figure for the previous year’s same period.

The steelmakers produced 622.7 million tons of steel in the first four months of this year, which indicates a 13 percent drop compared to the same period last year.

According to the WSA report, China, India, Japan, the U.S., and Russia were the world’s top steel producers respectively.

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.

EF/MA