Iran’s crude steel production in 2018 rose more than 17% in comparison to the year before that, the latest worldsteel statistics show.
The country mills produced 25 million tons of crude steel during January-December 2018, according to the last report by the World Steel Association (worldsteel), published on Wednesday, 23 January.
The Iranian production in 2017 was 21.236 million tons, showing a 17.7% increase in the country’s year-on-year output, the report by the Brussels-based international trade body for the iron and steel industry show.
The new figures rank Iran as the tenth biggest world crude steel producer after Brazil with over 34 million tons of production and followed by Italy that saw an output of more than 24 million tons, as pointed in the worldsteel review.
In Middle East, Iran is the first crude steel producer, trailed by a large margin (20 million tons) by Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar.
A screenshot of Worldsteel report showing Iran's output in 2018 and 17
Eearlier, Iranian Steel Producers Association, Bahram Sobhani, had predicted the country’s production could rise to 25 million tons.
Iran was world’s 14th biggest crude steel producer in the first six months of 2017.
The report by Worldsteel, whose members account for about 85% of the global output, demonstrate that global crude steel production jumped 4.6 percent to 1,808.6 million tons in 2018, while output in top steel producer China rose by 6.6 percent, according to Reuters. Worldsteel’s second office is in the Chinese capital, Beijing.
Output in India rose 4.9 percent to 106.5 million tons to replace Japan as the world’s second largest steel producer.
The steel industry, worth about $900 billion a year, is seen as a gauge of economic health.
Direct reduced iron
The latest data by the 64-member World Steel Association put Iran as the world’s second largest producer of direct reduced iron with a yearly production of 25, 540 million tons in 2018. The West Asian country’s 2017 output was 19,401 million tons that shows a 31.6% year-on-year rise.
India remains the global producer of sponge iron with an output of more than 30 million tons, according to the report.
A screenshot of Worldsteel report showing Iran's output in 2018 and 17