Iran’s Steel Output Up by 2.5% in 7 Months: WSA

The latest report by the World Steel Association (WSA) indicates that Iran’s steel output rose by 2.5% in the first seven months of 2023 as compared to the same period in the previous year despite the decline in the global output.

According to the WSA data, Iran produced 18.4 million tons of crude steel in the mentioned seven months. Iran was ranked 10th among the world’s top steel producers in the mentioned place, according to the WSA report. The WSA put the crude steel output by the world’s top 64 producers at about 1.107 billion tons in the mentioned time span, 0.7% less than the figure for the previous year’s same seven months.

Based on the WSA data, China, the world's largest steelmaker, produced more than 613.7 million tons of raw steel in the first seven months of 2024, followed by India (86.4 million tons), Japan (49.8 million tons), the U.S. (46.9 million tons), Russia (43.1 million tons), South Korea (37.1 million tons), Germany (22 5 million tons), Turkey (21.7 million tons) and Brazil (19.4 million tons).

Production of steel in Iran increased by 5.8% in the previous Iranian calendar year 1402 (ended on March 19), as compared to the preceding year, according to the Iranian Steel Producers Association (ISPA).

According to the latest data released by the ISPA, the country’s steel production reached 29.334 million tons in the previous year. Of the mentioned amount, 18,452,000 tons were billet and bloom and 10,882,000 tons were slabs; Billet and bloom production increased by 9.2% and slab production increased by 0.7% in the previous year.

According to the ISPA data, the production of sponge iron also increased by 8.5% in the previous year in comparison to the figure for the preceding year. Iran improved its global standing in steel production, becoming the ninth-largest producer in January 2024, according to new data released by the WSA.

The Islamic Republic produced 31.1 million tons of crude steel in 2023 to account for 58.4% of West Asia’s total production in the mentioned year, according to the WSA. The West Asian nations reviewed in the WSA report, including Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, managed to produce 53.2 million tons of steel in 2023.

The country’s steel production increased by 1.8% in 2023 as compared to the previous year, when the production stood at 30.6 million tons, based on the WSA data. West Asia’s total crude steel output increased by 1.3% in the mentioned year as compared to 2022.

Based on the WSA data, Iran was the world’s 10th largest steel producer in 2023. The world's steel producers managed to produce more than 1.888 billion tons of steel in 2023, which is a very slight decrease compared to 2022, and as a result, the World Steel Association has declared the percentage of change to be zero.

China with a production of 1.019 billion tons, India with a production of 140.2 million tons, and Japan with a production of 87 million tons were the top three steel-producing countries in the world in 2023.

The Iranian steel industry has been constantly developing over the past few years against all the pressures and obstacles created by outside forces, such as the U.S. sanctions and the coronavirus outbreak, which have severely affected the performance of the world’s top producers. The country is expected to climb to seventh place among the world’s top steel producers by the Iranian calendar year 1404 (March 2025). - Tehran Times