SULAIMANI, Kurdistan Region — An investor has announced the details of a large project involving facilities in the Kurdistan Region and Iranian Kurdistan for producing steel locally and being less reliant on Iraq’s scrap metal for Kurdistan's iron and steel needs.
“We can no longer sit idle in Kurdistan waiting for scrap from south and central Iraq. We have to discover essential iron materials and produce it ourselves, said Aras Abdullah, the executive manager of MASS Company, which as a holding group is well-known in the Kurdistan Region for its iron, steel, and concrete ventures.
Abdullah revealed it is set to build three factories to extract iron from the mountains in Sanandaj and Saqqez in Iranian Kurdistan.
“These plants need iron material on a daily basis and we all depend on scrap iron from central and south Iraq,” he said.
MASS and other steel companies in the Kurdistan Region fear that supplies of scrap steel might decrease, so they are looking for other ways to get the metal.
“Basic steel material is abundant in Iran,” said Abdullah.
The Kurdistan Region has iron ore in Sulaimani’s Penjwen near the border with Iran, but businessmen haven’t invested there.
“Research has shown that basic iron components are not sufficient in Penjwen in order for big plants to be opened for it there,” explained Abdullah.
Due to the financial crisis and war on ISIS, some big Kurdish investors have looked abroad.
“We have some investors who have moved from Erbil to Georgia and set up big projects there, and some other investors have applied for projects in east Kurdistan [Iranian Kurdistan] cities,” said Yasin Mahmud Rashid, the spokesperson for Kurdistan Investment Union.
Iran Consul General to Sulaimani Saadullah Masoudian revealed a “nearly half a billion dollar investment” bilateral project to increase steel imports from Kurdistan Province in Iran to the Kurdistan Region.
“Within the framework of this investment, [this will] create thousands of job opportunities in the plants located in the Kurdistan Province of Iran,” he said.
Abdullah expressed gratitude for the assistance delivered by Iranian consul general, the governor of Sanandaj, and the Islamic Republic of Iran for facilitating the license of the project and giving nearly 400 acres of land.
“Extracting iron ore will pass through three steps. We therefore have to build three plants which will cost nearly half a million US dollars,” he explained.
The plants will be built near the city of Saqqez in Iranian Kurdistan.
“There is plenty of iron in this area which is close to the Kurdistan Region border.” “The tender stage has now finished with an Iranian company. We can start anytime now,” said Abdullah.
“We process 1.25 million tons of steel annually at our plant. We can provide basic iron material to other plants in Kurdistan as well,” he added.
Currently, 90 percent of iron in the Kurdistan Region plants comes from scrap from south and central Iraq. Abdullah sees the joint project as a way for the Kurdistan Region to become more diversified with its demands for steel.
“Nowadays scrap iron has increased because of the war. But this scrap will one day finish. So this project will enable us to produce steel all the time,” Abdullah said.
