Iranian steel industry has been constantly developing over the past years despite the US sanctions and the coronavirus outbreak that has severely affected the performance of the world’s top producers.

Production of crude steel in Iran increased 14.4 per cent in July for the same month in the past year, while the average global production for this commodity slipped 2.5 per cent in July this year, a report recently released by the World Steel Association (WSA) said.

According to the WSA, Iranian steel producers produced 2.339 million tonnes of crude steel during July, rising from 2.045 million tonnes produced in the same time span of 2019, Shata reported.

Iran has, in fact, emerged as the top crude steel producer in the Middle East region, where output has edged down 0.8 per cent to 3.2 million tonnes in July, according to WSA data. Africa recorded a 12 per cent decline to around 0.9 million tonnes in July.

The Iranian steel industry has outshined the world producers in this sector during the first seven months of 2020 altogether, as based on the WSA report Iran produced 16.335 million tonnes of steel during January to July period of 2020, 10.8 per cent more than the figure in the same seven months of 2019.

Iran’s crude steel production had also increased by 30 per cent in 2019 while the average global growth in this sector stood at 3.5 per cent. The country managed to produce 31.9 million tonnes of crude steel during 2019, while the figure was 24 million tonnes in 2018.

According to WSA, Iran became the world’s tenth-largest steel producer in 2018. Iran which stood at the 13th place in 2017 could lag behind three major steel producers in the world, namely Italy, Taiwan, and Ukraine to stand at the 10th place in 2018, despite the re-imposition of sanctions by the US.

Last month, a board member of the Iranian Steel Producers Association (ISPA) told Irna that Iran has the capacity to export 15 million tonnes of steel per annum. Saying that the country’s annual steel production has reached 30 million tonnes, Reza Shahrestani stated that of this figure 15 million tonness can be exported and bring $7 billion of revenue for the country.

“Iran is now among the world’s top ten steel producers and in order to prove our capabilities in this due, we should have a strong presence in the international markets,” he stressed.

Iran’s export of steel products in the past Iranian calendar year (ended on March 19) rose 27 per cent compared to its preceding year. The country’s steel producers managed to export 7.33 million tonnes of the products in the previous year.

According to the data released by the Industry, Mining, and Trade Ministry, in the mentioned period over 20.226 million tonnes of steel ingots were produced by the country’s 10 major companies to register a five-percent rise year on year.

The country has also defined 16 development projects in the steel sector to boost the output of steel products by 17.3 million tonnes in five years.

These projects are for constructing production units each with the capacity of 600,000 tonnes, while some other projects have been also defined to set up some units with under 500,000-tonnes capacity that together will add 19.1 million tonnes to the country’s annual steel output.

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

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