South Korean Firm to Build Steel Plant in Iran

Text of report in English by South Korean news agency Yonhap

Seoul, 23 January: South Korea’s POSCO Engineering and Construction Co said Monday [23 January] it has won a 330m US dollars order to build a steel plant in Iran.

“We hope this will provide us with an opportunity to make inroads into Iran’s steel plant market,” POSCO Engineering said in a news release, adding that Iran is pushing to boost its annual steel capacity from the present 10m tons to 29m tons by 2010.

The order from Iran’s Samangan Steel Industries Co calls for POSCO Engineering to build a mini mill with an annual capacity of 740,000 tons of billets or semi-finished materials for steel bars, the company said.

Construction will begin in August this year for completion in May 2009, it said.

The plant will be built in the Sirjan Special Economic Zone in Iran’s Kerman Province, about 1,000 km south of Iran’s capital, Tehran, it said.

Samangan Steel Industries Co is majority-owned by Kerman Development Organization, POSCO Engineering said.