With the opening of the Neishabur Steel Project, the country’s direct reduced iron production capacity has increased to 800 thousand tons, annually. Shargh however, considers this as one of the seven projects which were carried out at incorrect locations during the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Although these projects were halted in 2013, with the presidency of Hassan Rouhani, their development was later restarted. Mohammad Karbasian, CEO of IMIDRO told Shargh, Once a project has commenced, either correctly or incorrectly, halting it has political and social consequences. This has led to agricultural lands in Neishabur which were suffering from a water crisis, to change to industrial land. The first phase of Neishabur steel has been completed with financing from Parsian Bank (85%) and IMIDRO (15%). The Iron ore for this complex is supplied from Sangan mine with a current production capacity of 2.6 million tons of iron concentrate.
