"Chador Malu produced 10.1 million mt of iron ore concentrate, fines and lumps in the last Iranian year [21.03.2008-20.03.2009], which is up 33.2 percent compared with the previous year," Chador Malu Mining and Industrial Company (CMIC) managing director Mahmoud Noorian recently declared.
Mr. Noorian also stated that CMIC exploited 15.8 million mt of iron ore in the last Iranian year, showing an increase of 50 percent compared with the previous year. CMIC, located 180 km northeast of the central Iranian city of Yazd, is one of Iran's main iron ore miners.
Chador Malu holds a deposit of about 400 million mt of iron ore, of which 320 million mt is extractable. CMIC operates the mine at Chador Malu as an open-cast pit, with an annual production capacity of 12 million mt of iron ore. This is part-processed on site to produce up to 7.1 million mt per year of iron ore concentrate. CMIC also produces up to one million mt of crushed high-grade iron ore per year for domestic blast furnaces and for export.
CMIC is continuing its development at Chador Malu. The initial three lines at the beneficiation plant built by Japan's Kobe Steel in 2006 have already been supplemented with a fourth, which was inaugurated by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in February 2009. The construction of a fifth line was slated to begin in the spring. Kobe Steel was also commissioned last year to supply a 3.4 million mt per year pelletizing plant.
Further expansion is clearly on the agenda for CMIC as the private sector takes a greater role in the Iranian mining sector and as the government seeks to sustain the growth of national steel output. Once the plant has five beneficiation lines, it will have an annual production capacity of 8 million mt of concentrate.
The fourth beneficiation plant has pushed the annual pellet production capacity up to 3.4 million mt. CMIC's management says that apatite production capacity could potentially reach 200,000 mt per year in the long term.
In line with the Iranian government's plans to significantly boost domestic iron and steel output through raising iron ore production levels at domestic mines, Tehran is now planning to transfer CMIC and several other major mining businesses more fully to the private sector in a drive to bolster national iron and steel output. However, there remain constitutional constraints on the full privatization of such a potentially profitable sector as mining.
Chador Malu Mining and Industrial Company (CMIC) was launched to commercially operate iron ore mines at Chador Malu in 1992. Tehran made the National Iranian Steel Company (NISCO) responsible for developing the reserves after detailed evaluation studies for a mine were completed in 1979. However, it was not until 1989 that plans for the mine received approval from the country's Plan & Budget Organization. Test production for commercial extraction began in 1998, and, after the isolated site had been connected to the national power grid and the railway network, full commercial operations began the following year.
In 2003, CMIC became a public joint stock company. Some 19 percent of its stock is in the hands of private shareholders, the majority of which are corporate holding and investment vehicles. This listing exposes CMIC to wider investor sentiment towards the performance and prospects of the Iranian mining sector.