Iranian iron ore miner Gol-e-Gohar has announced that it is to set up a new beneficiation plant and also that it has plans to build a new steel producing facility in the future.
"Gol-e-Gohar is to set up a new beneficiation plant having an annual capacity of 2 million mt per year with an estimated investment of €60 million, while it will also establish a steel plant with a capacity of 1.6 million mt per year in the future at an estimated investment cost of €223 million," Gol-e-Gohar managing director Amir Hossein Akbari has stated.
Gol-e-Gahar's new beneficiation plant will be located at Sirjan in the southern Iranian province of Kerman, near the company's three existing beneficiation plants which have a combined capacity of about seven million mt per year. Meanwhile, the planned steel plant, also to be located at Sirjan, will produce semi-finished products such as billet and bloom.
As previously reported by SteelOrbis, earlier in May Gol-e-Gohar announced that its long-awaited plan to build a pelletizing plant with an annual capacity of 5 million mt had almost reached completion. Gol-e-Gohar, which controls deposits of 1.135 billion mt of iron ore, is to commission the new pelletizing plant in July 2009 near Sirjan city, at the cost of an overall investment of about €140 million. The new facility will be the largest pelletizing plant in Iran.
Gol-e-Gohar has control over six major iron ore bodies, although the company is currently only exploiting one of these which has reserves of 250 million mt.
Meanwhile, the company is also a shareholder in Gohar Zamin, which it has made responsible for the exploitation of another deposit with 643 million mt of reserves, 450 million mt of which are mineable.