Iran’s Steel Output to Hit 42mln Tons by 2015

Iran is slated to boost its annual steel output capacity to 42 million tons in the near future, a senior industry official announced.

“By the end of the Fifth Five-Year Economic Development Plan (2011-2015), the country’s steel production output will stand at 42 million tons,” Managing-Director of Mobarakeh Steel Company Mohammad Massoud Sameenejad said on Tuesday.

“Within next 12 years, Iran’s steel output will amount to 55 million tons,” he added.

He noted that 40 countries in Asia, Europe, America and Africa are importers of steel from Iran.

Earlier this year, the World Steel Association (WSA) announced that “Iran is the largest steel producer in the Middle-East and North Africa.

According to WSA’s report, Iran produced 14.463 million tons of crude steel in 2012, and was named the first largest producer of crude steel in the Middle-East and North Africa.

The country’s main steel mills are located in Isfahan and Khuzestan provinces.

Iran has risen its steel production output by more than 9 percent, the WSA announced in January, adding that the country is now the world’s 15th steel producer.

Among 62 world major steel producers, Iran jumped two steps higher and became the world’s 15th steel producer in 2012, the report said. Iran ranked above UK, Spain and Canada.

In December, Sameenejad announced too that Iran “is the biggest steel producer in the Middle East and North Africa”.

“The WSA has named Iran as the biggest producer of steel in the Middle-East and North Africa in the same period,” Sameenejad said at the time.

Elaborating on his company’s share in Iran’s steel production, he said that Mobarakeh Steel Company produced 46 percent of Iran’s steel output in the first 10 months of 2012.

With a production of 1.09mln tons, Iran was the world’s 16th steel producer in September.

Last year, an Iranian official announced that the production of steel in Iran has grown 5 million tons in the past two years despite the harsh sanctions imposed by the West against the country.

“Despite the intensified sanctions during the last two years, the capacity of Iran’s steel production has increased 5mln tons and we will be completely self-sufficient in the steel industry in the next three years,” Vice-President of Iran’s Steel Association Hamidreza Taherizadeh told FNA in July.