BAKU, Azerbaijan, April 17. The activity of 46 inactive mines in Iran’s Razavi Khorasan Province in the north-east of the country was resumed, over the last Iranian year (March 21, 2022 through March 20, 2023), an official of the Industry, Mine and Trade Organization of Razavi Khorasan Province, Mehdi Hadi told ISNA, Trend reports.
“In total, there are 483 inactive mines in the province. In order to resume the activity of 265 of them, work is being done to hold auctions,” Hadi said.
The official added that the number of officially licensed mines in the province was 1047 at the end of last Iranian year. The reserve of the mentioned mines is 2.8 billion tons, and the annual production capacity is 65 million tons. In general, 12,270 people work in these mines.
According to him, 1.42 million tons of minerals were extracted from mines of Razavi Khorasan Province in the last Iranian year, which is an increase of 11 percent compared to 1.23 million tons in the preceding year (March 21, 2021, through March 20, 2022).
Reportedly, Iran's annual steel production capacity is around 40 million tons. Iran plans to increase the figure to 55 million tons by 2025.
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