Major Iranian producers of minerals and mining products exported 15.81 million tons worth $3.32 billion during the first quarter of the current Iranian year (March 21-June 21), to register a 48% and 7% year-on-year rise in tonnage and value respectively, fresh data released by the Iranian Mines and Mining Industries Development and Renovation Organization (IMIDRO) show.
Steel manufacturing chain products (iron ore, semi-finished and finished steel) topped the list of exports in terms of value with an aggregate of $1.65 billion, followed by iron ore pellets worth $262.87 billion and copper and related products worth $201.75 billion.
In terms of tonnage, cement and clinker topped the list with 3.32 million tons. Steel came next with 3.07 million tons, followed by pellet with 2.53 million tons.
Exports of titanium saw the biggest jump in terms of value (105,111%) to reach $400,000, followed by iron ore concentrate with $162.71 million (up 3,226%) and iron ore granule with $33.62 million (up 685%).
Exports of titanium had the highest growth in terms of weight (up 357,092%) with 90 tons. It was followed by iron ore concentrate (up 3,547) with 1.82 million tons and iron ore granule (up 294%) with 719,760 tons.
IMIDRO’s statistics pertain to heavyweight producers only and does not take into account exports by small-scale mining companies. Therefore, overall exports from Iran are higher than the figures cited above.
Heavyweight Iranian producers of minerals and mining products exported 48.68 million tons worth $12.23 billion in the last Iranian year (ended March 20, 2023) to register a 3.5% rise in tonnage, but a 7.6% fall in value compared with the year before, according to IMIDRO.
Q1 Imports Rose 24% to $1.1b
The IMIDRO report also shows imports related to the mining industry and mineral products stood at 1.21 million tons worth $1.18 billion during the same period to register a 40% increase in weight and a 24% rise in value compared with last year’s same period.
The steel category also topped the list of imports in terms of value with $410.51 million, followed by coal and coke worth $185.45 million and aluminum worth $101.38 million.
Coke and coal had the highest volume of imports in terms of weight with 422,110 tons, followed by steel with 325,180 tons and alumina powder with 95,620 tons.
The value of precious metals and stones imports saw the biggest jump (up 8,949%) with $530,000. It was followed by lead (2,742%) worth $5.86 million and mica (526%) worth $290,000.
Lead products had the highest growth of imports in terms of weight (10,301%) with 3,090 tons, followed by mica (613%) with 370 tons and chrome (357%) with 3,540 tons.
Imports related to the mining industry and mineral products stood at 4.48 million tons worth $4.99 billion in the fiscal 2022-23 to register a 3.9% increase in weight and a 27.5% rise in value compared with the fiscal 2021-22.
New Copper Reserves
In June, Iran’s media outlets reported the discovery of the largest known porphyry copper deposit in the Middle East.
The resource, said to contain around 3 billion tons of copper ore, would, if verified, quickly move on to the radar of companies driving the transition to green energy; vastly expanded volumes of copper are needed to drive that transition, meaning the race is on to locate giant deposits, the likes of which some Iranian officials are claiming to have discovered, bne Intellinews wrote.
State broadcaster IRIB and official news agency IRNA relayed news of the copper discovery, also bigger than anything of its kind in North Africa, that appears to have been first reported by provincial media covering the southeastern province of Kerman.
“The future of nations is tied to the copper industry,” Amir Hassanzadeh, deputy for economic affairs of Kerman’s Governorate, was quoted as saying, noting that Iran is located in a very favorable part of the world's copper belt.
Porphyry copper deposits are made up of orebodies that can also contain silver, gold and molybdenum. Such deposits are currently the world's largest source of copper ore.
The discovered deposit in Kerman is located in the vicinity of Sarcheshmeh, which already boasts a major open-cast copper mining and refining complex with a workforce of 18,000 exploiting a giant lode estimated at containing more than a billion tons of copper.
The new deposit was mapped with the drilling of 106 exploratory boreholes with a length of 93,000 meters. Plans are in place for a second exploration phase that will drill 60 boreholes with a length of around 80,000 meters. This could conceivably boost the porphyry copper estimate to 4 billion tons or more.
Iran currently ranks fifth in the world for copper reserves. The country also has extensive copper reserves in Sungun near the country’s northwestern border with Turkey. In fact, last week saw the launch of copper production in Sungun, where a modern smelter has been set up for output produced by open-cast operations.
The National Iranian Copper Industries Company (NICICO) is the third largest company on the Tehran Stock Exchange.
A NICICO executive, Behrouz Rahmati, noted that Iran's mineral reserves stood at 57 billion tons, ranking the country as one of the top 10 mineral-rich nations in the world.
He said copper, the third most consumed metal in the world, has already brought Iran $10 billion in foreign exchange.
Analysts say that given the expanding appetite for copper driven by the green energy revolution, there is still a sore lack of large-scale copper mines worldwide.
This year saw Anglo-Australian giant Rio Tinto’s long-delayed launch of mining at the Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold mine in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert.
When the mining operation peaks in 2030, it will be the world’s fourth-biggest source of copper, churning out half a million tons a year, according to Rio. That’s enough to meet demands in the making of around six million electric vehicles, or 60 of the biggest wind farms.
Lithium Deposit to Be Turned Into Working Mine
Iran’s sole known titanium deposit is to be turned into a working mine by March next year, according to local reports.
The titanium mine and associated processing facility in the vicinity of Kahnouj in Iran’s southeastern Kerman Province — also the location of the copper discovery — will come on stream following three decades in which efforts to achieve the launch always foundered, according to Moslem Moravveji, a Ministry of Industries, Mining and Trade provincial official, Tasnim News Agency reported on June 27.
The reserve is thought to contain between 150 million and 400 million tons of titanium, a silvery grey-white lustrous metal. The extraction and processing enterprise might produce 130,000 tons of titanium concentrate as well as 70,000 tons of slag annually.
Morraveji reportedly made the launch announcement in a briefing with local reporters about latest efforts in Kerman to extract copper, chromite, magnesium, gold and other mineral resources.
MIMT and state-owned Iranian Mines and Mining Industries Development and Renovation Organisation (IMIDRO) agreed in 2019 to award the project to develop a Kahnouj titanium mine to a private investor. However, no name of a private investor has been made public and it is likely that the investor is in fact linked with the state in some guise.
Due to Western sanctions that hinder investment projects, many such projects are being funded by various quasi-governmental groups and entities.
The two most useful properties of titanium are said to be corrosion resistance and its strength-to-density ratio, the highest of any metallic element. Unalloyed, titanium is as strong as some steels but less dense. The metal can be alloyed with iron, aluminum, vanadium and molybdenum to produce strong lightweight alloys for aerospace products, including jet engines, missiles and spacecraft. The most common titanium compound, titanium dioxide, is used as a photocatalyst and in the manufacture of white pigments.
Throughout the Cold War period, titanium was listed as a strategic material by the US. A large stockpile of a porous form of the pure metal, titanium sponge, was maintained by the Defense National Stockpile Center, until it was dispersed in the 2000s. As of 2021, the four leading producers of titanium sponge were China (52%), Japan (24%), Russia (16%) and Kazakhstan (7%), according to the United States Geological Survey.
Lithium and copper have a growing reputation as essential metals needed for technology, such as lithium batteries and electronics in electric vehicles, that is driving the green energy revolution
Around 7% of global mineral reserves are found in Iran, making it one of the most important mineral producers in the world. However, the country, partly because of the sanctions burden it endures, lacks the required technology to exploit the resources to the extent it would otherwise aim for.
Mineral products currently make up no more than 0.6% of Iranian GDP. At current rates, Iran’s mineral reserves are worth $700 billion, with value-added estimated at $4 trillion, according to Iranian reports.
Giant Lithium Deposit Promises to Be a Game-Changer
Iran’s neighbors are concerned by the Islamic Republic's rising economic influence since the discovery of a huge lithium deposit on Iranian territory that some observers have described as a game-changer, bne IntelliNews wrote, citing a report published by Lebanon’s Al Mayadeen on June 10.
The lithium field in the western Hamedan Province is thought to be the second largest in the world after a deposit in Chile, containing an estimated 8.5 million tons of lithium. That would give Iran control of 10% of the world's known lithium reserves of 89 million tones. That has the potential to bolster Iran's economy and mitigate the impact of sanctions. It would also give the Middle East power considerable leverage in the burgeoning electric vehicle market.
Lithium is a metal that some have dubbed the “new oil” because of its importance in the making of EVs. Iran's lithium discovery could open the way to an “unparalleled geopolitical and economic advantage” for Iran, leading to a “rebalancing of power in the region,” Anat Hochberg-Marom, an independent strategic consultant to government agencies and security institutions, said.
Iran announced that its lithium reserves rank as the fourth-largest in the world in April. It plans to start the production of lithium within two years, Tasnim News Agency reported on March 6, citing an official as saying.
South America still leads the world in lithium deposits by a considerable margin, with Chile home to deposits of 9.2 million tons of lithium, or 58% of the global reserves.
China is currently the world's largest market for lithium batteries as EV sales soar in the country. In the first quarter, over 60% of all cars sold in the country were either electric or hybrid modes.
In 2021, the global lithium-ion battery market reached 545 GWh and China accounted for more than half of the total.
