Five industrial projects worth 56 trillion rials ($237 million) were inaugurated in three provinces by President Hassan Rouhani via videoconference meetings on Thursday.

The inaugurations are part of the government’s plan to launch 200 industrial, mining and trade projects worth 1.69 quadrillion rials ($7 billion) across the country by the end of the current fiscal year (March 20, 2021), creating 41,000 new jobs along the way, the Ministry of Industries, Mining and Trade’s official news service Shata reported. 

One of the newly-inaugurated projects is a medium-density fiberboard plant owned by Arian Shimi Factory in Amirabad Port’s Special Economic Zone, located in northern Mazandaran Province. 

Hossein Modarres Khiyabani, the caretaker of Industries Ministry who was present at the site, said the plant has been established with 9 trillion rials ($38 million) of investment, and has the capacity to produce 300,000 cubic meters of MDF per year. The project has created a total of 200 direct jobs. 

Rouhani also launched the first phase of a heavy and light sodium carbonate production unit at Kaveh Glass Industrial Group in Firouzabad County of the southern Fars Province. 

Employing around 1,000 people, the unit’s sodium carbonate production capacity is said to stand at 320,000 tons per year. 

Present at the site during the inauguration, Mehdi Sadeqi-Niyaraki, an official with the Industries Ministry, said 20.6 trillion rials ($87 million) have been invested by private investors in this project.

He added that the project has raised the number of sodium carbonate production units in Iran to five, pushing up the material’s nominal production capacity to 897,000 tons per year.

In terms of its largest applications, sodium carbonate is used in the manufacture of glass, paper, rayon, soaps and detergents. 

In addition, with 440 billion rials ($1.8 million) of investment by a state-run business company, two new wheat storage silos were launched in Fars Province, one in Eqlid County and the other in Darab County.

According to Yazdan Seif, a deputy industries minister, who was also in attendance, the first project is a 30,000-ton metal silo, developed with modern technologies that can function automatically. 

The silo has raised the agricultural storage capacity of the area to 60,000 tons. 

“The second silo in Darab, with a production capacity of 40,000 tons, was launched with an investment of 200 billion rials [over $848,000]. The project is expected to create 30 direct jobs,” Seif said.

The main features of the silos are temperature monitoring and ventilation systems, programmable logic controllers, automated sampling systems and remote-controlled relief valves.

The last inaugurated project was a steel ingot and rebar production unit at South Rouhina Steel Complex in Dezful, located in the southwestern Khuzestan Province. 

The project was launched in the presence of Alireza Shahidi, the head of Geological Survey and Mineral Explorations of Iran. 

Shahidi explained that the mill has been constructed with 26 trillion rials ($110.26 million) of investment and has a production capacity of 450,000 tons per year, creating over 2,400 direct and indirect jobs.

Rouhina Steel Complex’s first production phase was launched in March 2017 with a production capacity of 500,000 tons of rebars per year. The plant was set up with $39.47 million of investment by the private sector using domestic and international financing.

Taking the new production unit into account, Iran is currently home to 142 units of steel rebar production with a nominal production of 21.7 million tons annually, he added.

Shahidi said there are 84 steel ingot production factories in Iran, with 38 million tons of output per year.

The Iranian government is planning to launch 12 more steel ingot production units by the current Iranian yearend (March 2021) with an estimated investment of 162 trillion rials ($687 million). 

The plans are expected to add 7.6 million tons to the current annual steel ingot production rate, employing over 6,100 people.

This was the eighth consecutive week of industrial inaugurations after the government’s scheme kicked off earlier this year. So far, 38 mining and industrial projects worth over 200 trillion rials ($848 million) have been launched. 

According to official data, the projects have created more than 6,000 direct jobs around the country.

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