ArcelorMittal Expands Steel Sales to Iran

World’s largest steel producing group of companies–ArcelorMittal–expanded its cooperation with Iran in 2016 by increasing steel product shipments to the country.

The company intends to continue cooperation with Iranian customers, but only in compliance with applicable sanction regulations, Metal Expert cited an official statement made by the Luxembourg-based multinational steel manufacturing corporation.

In 2016, steel sales of ArcelorMittal’s subsidiary ArcelorMittal International FZE in Dubai, otherwise known as AIMD, to customers in Iran generated $388 million in revenue, according to an official statement. With the ease of sanctions of the United Nations, European Union and the United States in January 2016, AMID started selling directly to buyers in Iran while earlier the company preferred to deal with trading companies, most of which were based in the UAE.

As a result, AIMD has been marketing construction steel and flat products to Iran as well as API grade slab products for use in the energy and petrochemicals sector.

In the meantime, ArcelorMittal’s Europe division has been concentrating on sales of coated flat products, alloy steel plates and stay cable strands both directly and indirectly for projects in Iran.

The cooperation allowed the company to generate $5.8 million in revenue and $0.8 million in profit in 2016.

ArcelorMittal intends to keep up cooperation with Iranian buyers of steel products and continues to monitor the developments in this area, especially the ones related to the sanction policies against Iran.

In its official statement, ArcelorMittal stresses that none of the above sales was closed with any sanctionable end-user and none of the deals was conducted in US dollars.

ArcelorMittal was ranked 108th in the 2016 Fortune Global 500 ranking of the world’s biggest corporations.

source: Financial Tribune