Iran as a Highly Potential Hub for Primary Aluminium Industry: Opportunities and Challenges ahead

Aluminium is the metal known as the Material and Energy Bank since it's one of the most energy-intensive industries and at the same time aluminium is 100% recyclable. Also, Iran is the first biggest owner of global natural gas reserves with abundant and cheap gas whose importance is increasing as the fuel for aluminium's power production. Therefore, aluminium industry could be the best energy conversion industry for Iran. Furthermore, aluminium's future market is predicted to be very promising especially in automotive, aerospace and power transmission. Besides these demand markets, in China and the Middle East including Iran the building and construction market is the main user of aluminium with quite a rosy demand foreseen for it. Iran's energy position and this bright demand outlook of aluminium seem to be reasonable enough for investing in the development of primary aluminium industry in the country. Although aluminium is a favorable industry to develop, the conditions for economic production must be provided so that the operations will be economically viable considering the relatively lower price of the metal compared to e.g. cooper's price. These required conditions for profitable growth of aluminium industry will be discussed here. More importantly, Imidro as the main mineral industry executive body of the Ministry of Industry, Mine and Trade is responsible for planning and drawing the road map for Iranian aluminium industry. Such development strategies in primary aluminium industry along with the facts and figures supporting them are presented in this paper.

کلیدواژه ها:

Aluminium ، energy conversion ، gas ، demand market ، development ، IMIDRO ، Middle East ، economy