The report added that the volume of steel production in the world in the 3-month period has risen by 0.5 percent.

More than 469 million tons of steel was produced across the world in January-March 2024, 161.2 million tons of which was produced in March 2024.

Iran has produced 7.6 million tons of steel from January to March 2024, showing a 16.3 percent growth compared to the same period last year.

China, India, Japan, the US, Russia, South Korea, Germany, Turkey, Brazil and Iran were the world’s top 10 steel producers in the first quarter of 2024.

Production of steel in Iran increased by 5.8 percent 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 percent and slab production increased by 0.7 percent in the previous year.

According to the ISPA data, the production of sponge iron also increased by 8.5 percent 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 percent 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 percent 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 percent 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 years against all the pressures and obstacles created by outside forces like the US sanctions and the coronavirus outbreak that has 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).

The official noted that steel production in the country also increased by 10.5 percent in the first three months of the current calendar year (March 21-June 21) as compared to the same quarter in the previous year.

Yaghoubi estimated Iran’s steel production to reach 32 million tons in the current year.

AMK/TT