Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 3
By Kamyar Eghbalnejad – Trend:
An Iranian steel producer has forecasted that the county’s exports over the current fiscal year (starting March 20) would hit eight million tons as new markets have been reached in the Europe and Asia.
Saying that Iran exported five million tons of steel products over the 2016/17 fiscal year, Mehdi Sarlak, the head of marketing department at Esfahan Steel Company, in an exclusive interview with Trend forecasted that the figure would surpass eight million over the current year.
Elaborating on the possible growth in the exports of the Iranian products, he said that the country for the first time managed to export its steel products to the UK, Thailand and Indonesia over the current year.
According to the official, this was realized after a significant drop in the volume of the exports of China due to a growth in the domestic consumption.
Saying that the demand for Iran’s steel products has surged, he added that the country plans to export about 200,000 tons of steel ingot to the new markets.
According to the official, volume of the exports of Esfahan Steel Company stands at about 1.1 million tons per year.
World Steel Association (WSA), through its latest report, suggested that the country produced 20.5 million tons of sponge iron during 2017, accounting for 28 percent of total global output.
The Iranian Steel Producers Association says the industry produced over 16.073 million tons of crude steel during the first nine months of the current fiscal year (March 20-Dec. 21, 2017), a rise by 16 percent compared to the same period of last year.
According to the official statistics, the country exported 4.614 million tons of crude steel (an 80 percent increase year-on-year) and 1.075 million tons of various steel products (a 29 percent fall).