We hope to bring our production to 14 million tons per year, which is expected to boost Iran’s rank to 11th place in the world.

The two-day seminar on production and consumption of tinplate in Iran took place on 20-21 April 2003 at the R&D Center of Isfahan’s Mobarakeh Steel Company, with more than 200 participants from 40 different companies in consumption sector and 14 scientific-research organizations taking part in the event. The aim of the seminar was the technical and business contact between Mobarakeh Steel Co. as the producer and the packaging industry as the consumer.

Dr. Fakhredin Ashrafizadeh, the Seminar’s Secretary from Isfahan’s Industrial University, referring to the history of tinplate production, pointed to the public recognition of tinplate and added that the production of steel in our country enjoys some advantages such as price, availability and technical support.

Managing Director of Isfahan’s Mobarakeh Steel Company, Mahmood Eslamian, spoke at the seminar and said over 850 million tons of steel is being produced globally and Iran’s share of this is only 8 million tons. This places us 22nd on the list of the world’s steel producers, but with the interest shown by the private sector and by carrying out the scheduled plans, we hope to bring our production to 14 million tons per year, which is expected to boost Iran’s rank to 11th place in the world. He also said that the share of Isfahan’s Mobarakeh Steel Company is forecast to be 4.3 million tons, which will be achieved through our expansion plans by the end of 2003.

Noting the existing advantages in Iran regarding iron ore resources, amounting to 2 billion tons, he said that Mobarakh Steel has been able to reduce the foreign currency cost of steel production from $140 in the early production era, to $28 last year. Thus Mobarakeh Steel now stands equal to South Korea and China subsequent to the CIS members.

Mobarakeh Steel has invested about 2950 billion rials and $740 million in its expansion projects. Eslamian added that the production of coating steel sheets is considered to be a huge investment project allowing local provision of coating steel sheet requirements, integration of production lines, downstream completion, the completion of production chains, improving product quality, promoting the quality culture in the upstream production lines, increasing the value added products and annual savings in foreign currency amounting to $50 million.