Baku, Azerbaijan, May 3
By Umid Niayesh - Trend:
Iran’s paper making industry registered a significant growth in the fiscal year to March 2018, according to Mohammad Ali Esfandiari, the deputy director of chemical industries office of the Industry, Mine and Trade ministry.
However, the official confirmed that production of papers for publications (books, newspapers, magazines, etc.) experienced decline in the period.
Esfandiari said that Iran’s overall paper output reached 770,000 tons in the last fiscal year, which is 32 percent more year-on-year, the industry ministry said in its official website.
Earlier Gholamreza Shoja, the CEO of Iranian Lithographers Cooperatives, the representative of Print Industry Association said that local production cannot even met 5 percent of newsprint consumption in Iran.
Iranians consume about 2 million tons of different types of paper and cardboard, of which 400,000 tons a year are used for publications.
Esfandiari belives that Iranian paper making companies prefer to produce other types of the product that are more economically justified rather that paper for publications.
According to Esfandiari the country’s consumption of various papers type is on increasing rail due to the changing consumption pattern of the country’s developing industry.
There are three paper mills in Iran: Mazandaran Wood and Paper Industries, which is a state-run company that is overstaffed like other public factories; Amirabad Paper Mill in Behshahr located on the coast of Caspian Sea and Pars Paper Company Iran in southern Iran.
However, according to Shoja, locally-produced paper is 15 percent more expensive and its quality is lower than that of imported paper.
Despite the decline in publishing paper output, Iran’s packaging paper production was in better position in the last fiscal year. The country’s packaging paper production amounted to 540,000 tons in the last fiscal year, registering a 60 percent rise year-on-year, Esfandiari said.
He added that the Islamic Republic exported 100,000 tons of the packaging paper in the 12-month period.