According to the Industry, Mining and Trade Ministry data, of the mentioned figure 3.533 million tons were produced in the last month of the previous year (February 19-March 20).

As reported, the country’s major iron ore concentrate producers had managed to produce about 47.306 million tons of the mentioned product in the Iranian calendar year 1398.

Last year, major mining companies also produced 902,454 tons of granulated iron ore, to register a decrease of 54 percent compared to the preceding year (1,965,733 tons).

Iran had produced 24.6 million tons of iron ore concentrate during the first half of the previous Iranian calendar year (March 20-September 21, 2020), which was also four percent higher than the figure of the same period of time in the preceding year.

Also, the monthly iron ore concentrate output during the sixth month of that year had risen six percent on an annual basis.

In its outlook plan for the Iranian calendar year 1404 (2025-2026) Iran has envisaged production of 55 million tons of steel per annum, and to achieve this target the country requires to extract 160 million tons of iron ore.

In a bid to prevent the exports of unprocessed minerals, creating more value-added and meeting the requirements of domestic producers for the raw materials, Iran has levied a 25-percent duty on the exports of raw minerals since September 2019.

The duty is aimed at encouraging the production of more processed minerals such as pellets and concentrate instead of selling the raw minerals.

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IMIDRO data also put the amount of raw iron ore extracted during the mentioned time at 48,759 million tons.

Furthermore, the country’s non-oil trade data shows that Iran has exported $537.1 million of iron ore concentrate and iron ore pellet in the mentioned nine-month period.

The country exported $1.072 billion of iron ore in the past Iranian calendar year (ended on March 20, 2018), which indicates 31.1 percent rise from its previous year’s figure, according to the data released by the Islamic Republic of Iran Customs Administration (IRICA).

China was the main buyer of Iran’s iron ore in the past year, importing $1.043 billion of the product from Iran, which is 97 percent of the total exports.

Iraq, India, Russia and Afghanistan stood at the next places after China in the past year.

Iran is one of the top 10 mineral-rich countries where 68 types of minerals have been identified so far, including the world’s largest deposits of copper, zinc and iron.

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