Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 21
By Fatih Karimov – Trend:
Albania and Sweden became the new petrochemical customers of Iran, Mehr news agency reported Sept. 21.
Earlier China was sharing some 50 percent of Iran’s petrochemical exports, however following the removal of international sanctions in January 2016, Iran tries to diversify its target markets.
The Islamic Republic plans to send its first petrochemical consignment to Italy as well.
The commercial director of Iran's Karoon Petrochemical Plant, Kazem Bostakian, said last week that the toluene diisocyanate (TDI) consignment of the plant will be sent to Italy soon, saying the deal has been made possible under the auspices of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) implementation.
As Iran tries to increase its share in the EU market, certain part of the Iranian petrochemical exports to the European countries is carried out by third parties due to unsettled banking problems.
Last month Iran also commenced exports of petrochemical products to Brazil, as two shipments of urea with total volume of 64,250 tons were sent to the South American country.
Iran’s actual production capacity is around 61 million tons per annum, but the shortage of natural gas as feedstock, old production units, and the problem of sanctions, which forced exports to drop, caused petrochemical complexes to work at lower capacities.
The Islamic Republic hopes to bring this capacity to 120 million tons by 2020 and 180 million tons by 2025.
Iran produced 46.4 million tons of petrochemical products during the last fiscal year (ended March 20), but for the current year, the figure is planned to reach 54.7 million tons.
The country’s petrochemical products export increased by 25.03 percent to $7.462 billion during the first five months of current fiscal year (March 20-Aug. 21).