Mazandaran Paper Mill Resumes Exports

Mazandaran Wood and Paper Industries Company has resumed exports of paper after a five-year hiatus. 
According to Ali-Akbar Safarian, managing director of the company, exports resumed on Oct. 23. 
The company’s previous shipment was sent to China in the year ending March 2017, IRNA reported. 
“At present, the raw materials of this company include 30% of wood and 70% of cardboard and paper waste. Over the first half of the current [fiscal] year [March 21-Sept. 22], the factory produced 50,000 tons of paper, that is 2.5 times more than the volume of last year’s same period,” he said. 
“A total of 21,000 cubic meters of dried wood have been purchased by the company this year. With government support, the end price of paper produced by Mazandaran Wood and Paper Industries Company will be competitive with any domestic and foreign-made paper.” 
Safarian said the company was set up with an investment of $600 million and allocation of 150,000 hectares of forest, but faced challenges when the so-called “Breathing Plan”, which bans any wood exploitation in the endangered forest, including Hyrcanian forest, took effect in the year ending March 2017. 
The government has lent occasional financial support to Mazandaran Wood and Paper Industries Company since then, including the allocation of $10 million for purchasing raw materials at the subsidized foreign exchange rate in fiscal 2019-20. 
Mazandaran Wood and Paper Industries Company was established in the year ending March 1998 in Sari, Mazandaran, and has 1,300 people on its payroll.