Tehran’s stone export consortiums have established permanent stone exhibitions in seven countries with the support of Tehran Industrial Parks Company, an official with the company said.
The exhibitions have been set up in Oman, Iraq, Panama, China, India, Germany and Spain with the aim of showcasing Iranian stone products and expanding export markets.
Nasrin Mosaddeq Sedqi added that despite the existence of over 1,000 mines and 6,000 stone processing factories across the country, Iran has a small share in the global stone industry, IRNA reported.
Sedqi believes that the Iranian stone industry has been hit in recent years by recession in the construction market and export of unprocessed stones.
She stressed that promotion of exports is the only way to pull this industry out of recession.
“The higher the exports, the higher will be production and job creation,” she concluded.
Mahallat County in Markazi Province is the hub of decorative stone production in Iran. There are 70 active stone mines in Mahallat that possesses 30 million tons of mineral reserves. Some 2 million tons are extracted annually.
Over 2% of the world’s construction and travertine stones are produced in Mahallat. Some 280 processing units, with a capacity of 18 million square meters of stone, are active there.
About $270 million worth of decorative stones were exported in the last Iranian year (March 2016-17), registering a 35% increase compared with the year before. Production of ornamental and structural stones stood at 15.5 million tons during the same period, up 18% year-on-year.
According to Malek Rahmati, vice chairman of Iran Stone Association, Iran ranks third in terms of variety and production volume of ornamental stones after China and India.
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