Iranian iron ore miner Gol-e-Gohar Iron Ore Co.'s long-awaited plan to build a pelletizing plant with an annual capacity of 5 million mt is almost complete. Gol-e-Gohar, which controls deposits of 1.135 billion mt of iron ore, will commission a new pelletizing plant in July 2009 near the Gol-e-Gohar iron ore mine close to the southern Iranian city of Sirjan city, at a cost of about €140 million. The new facility will be the largest palletizing plant in Iran.
The contract for the construction of the pelletizing plant was signed in 2003 with a consortium including local construction company Concrete Industries & Copper Investment Consortium (CIC) accounting for a 53 percent share, Finland-based Outokumpu's technology division Outotec accounting for 33 percent, Swiss-based ABB with nine percent and Spain-based Taim with five percent. In the project Outotec will provide supervision services as the plant comes on stream. The rest of the major equipment is being delivered by European suppliers including electricity suppliers ABB and material handling equipment suppliers Taim.
Apart from the new pelletizing plant, the company is also planning a beneficiation and desulphurisation plant with its start-up slated for February 2009. Work has already begun on this plant which will have an annual capacity of 550,000 mt of haematite concentrate with Fe content of 68 percent and an annual 500,000 mt desulphurization capacity for magnetite concentrate. The plant will supplement the company's existing beneficiation facilities, which have a total capacity of 7 million mt per year.
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.