Russia To Build Iran Steel Complex

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30981, 10 February 1966, Page 11

Russia To Build Iran Steel Complex

(N .Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright) TEHERAN. One of Iran's long cherished dreams, to possess a steel industry, is about to come true. Russia is to build Iran a big industrial complex, including a steel mill, a machinetools plant and satellite units in exchange for natural gas, and industrial and agricultural products from Iran. The Russians will also

build a pipeline for exporting Iran’s natural gas to the Southern Soviet republics. The steel mill, the first in Iran, will be built near Isfahan, in central Iran. It will have an annual production of between 500,000 tong and 600,000 tons of steel during its first phase. This will rise to between Im tons and 1,200,000 tons in the second phase, in about three years.

The machine tools plant, the site of which will be decided later, will start operation with an annual capacity of from 25,000 tons to 30,000 tons of various types of heavy and light machines and tools and agricultural machinery. The gas pipeline will be built between the southern oilfields and the gas reservoirs, near the Persian Gulf, to Astara, on the Caspian coast at the Irano-Soviet frontier, in the north.