Executive operations for a melamine crystal production unit at Shiraz Petrochemical Company in Fars Province will start later this year, the managing director of the company said.“The 40,000-ton unit will be built to complete the value chain of urea at the company,” Ahmadreza Heydarnia was also quoted as saying by Naftema website.The company is planning for more development projects to increase its output as well as exports, he added.Shiraz Petrochemical Company, the first fertilizer production facility of Iran, was founded in 1959. The major feedstock for the operating plants are natural gas, limestone and salt. The natural gas source is from the main cross-country pipeline, while the limestone and salt are extracted from the adjacent mines.The initial goal of the company was to meet the country’s fertilizer needs, but it now produces a vast variety of chemicals and petrochemicals. It has a nominal production capacity of about 3.2 million tons per year and is now one of the major urea producers in the country.Urea is mainly used as fertilizer in the agriculture sector and as raw materials in other industries. The annual urea production is about 7.5 million tons in Iran, around half of which is sold domestically and the surplus is exported.In addition to producing urea fertilizer, the company has the ability to produce and export urea ammonium nitrate as a product with better quality and performance than urea fertilizer.Produced by combining urea, nitric acid and ammonia, UAN is a liquid fertilizer product with a nitrogen content ranging from 28% to 32%. UAN can be applied more uniformly than non-liquid forms of fertilizer.Iran is self-sufficient in urea production. In two years, urea output is expected to reach 15 million tons per annum from 7.5 million tons now after new plants open.About 150 million tons of urea fertilizer are used in the world annually, with the figure reaching 2 million tons in Iran.Urea fertilizer is widely used in Iran and worldwide as a nitrogen supply for a group of plants, including wheat, barley, sunflower and sugarbeet.One of the main exports of Iranian petrochemical companies to countries such as India and Brazil is the urea fertilizer. The annual production of this fertilizer in Iran is 7.5 million tons, of which 4.5 million tons are exported.The global urea market exhibited stable growth during 2015-20. The market is expected to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate of around 3% during 2021-26.  (ICE TEHERAN)

Fonte notizia: Financial Tribune