The potential of Iran's stone mines
Iran is a country rich in mines of all kinds of building stones, which is among the well-known countries in the world with about three billion tons of known decorative and building stone reserves. There are about 1,300 construction stone mines in Iran with a nominal annual extraction capacity of about 27 million tons. These mines exist in different parts of Iran, which supply the country's domestic production and foreign exports. Decorative and construction stone quarries in Iran have a great diversity in color, design and quality. The variety of stones in Iran's mines includes travertine, marble, marble, onyx, granite, porcelain, crystal and limestone, and the distribution of its main groups is 44% marble, 25% porcelain and crystal, 20% granite, 10% The stone is travertine and one percent is marble
Iran ranks eighth in the world in terms of building stone reserves. Iranian building stones are exported to various places around the world. Some unique Iranian stones, such as Azarshahr travertine, are world famous, and many popular and widely used stones in the world are extracted only in our country.
Some provinces of our country are world famous for supplying the best building stones. Isfahan province can be considered the land of travertine stones. Of course, the stone mines of this province are not only limited to travertine, but this province also provides an acceptable share of granites in the Iranian stone market.
There are about 90 travertine mines in Isfahan province. This issue has caused the number of quarry units that are active in the field of travertine processing in this province to be very high. After Isfahan, the central provinces, West Azarbaijan, East Azarbaijan, then Yazd, Zanjan, Qazvin, and Hamedan can be introduced as provinces with high abundance of Iranian travertine stone
We have the largest amount of granite in the country in South Khorasan province. There are approximately 80 active and semi-active granite mines in this province. After this province, we see the strong presence of West Azarbaijan province in supplying granite to the Iranian stone market, as well as export to countries such as Turkey, Iraq and Armenia. This province also has more than 60 granite mines, and 40% of the stones extracted from them are mainly used for export. In addition to these provinces, we see the extraction of a large amount of granite in the provinces of Isfahan, Zanjan, Razavi Khorasan, East Azarbaijan and Yazd. Of course, other provinces of the country, such as Central Province, Tehran, Kerman, Sistan and Baluchistan, etc. also have an acceptable contribution in the extraction of these stones
Iranian building stones are found with a reasonable distribution in different provinces of the country. In addition to the aforementioned, most marble and porcelain quarries are located in Lorestan. This province also has about 70 marble and porcelain mines. It can be said that Iran's construction stone industry supplies about 30% of its needs from this province. Every year, more than one million tons of stone are extracted from the mines of this province. After Lorestan, the central provinces, Yazd, Kerman, Razavi Khorasan and Hormozgan are other provinces rich in marble.
Supplying domestic needs: The presence of different types of Iranian building stones in various colors and with different quality levels and with unique features has caused the need for imports in this area to be almost zero. This issue causes financial circulation in the country and the prosperity of the economy.
A large number of countries in the world are satisfied with the production of only one type of building stone in their mines due to the lack of variety of stone mines. For example, Brazil is a country that only has granite mines, or Italy has the only marble mine in its area, but in the meantime, Iran can take a huge share of the global stone market with careful management and data-driven marketing. It should also be noted that Iran's stone industry, with nearly 100% private sector investment and direct and indirect employment of over 400,000 people, most of whom work in the rural and deprived areas of the country, has made a worthy contribution to the development of the private sector economy. has a non-governmental organization in Iran's industry and mining.But the widespread global sanctions, which have cast a shadow on the country's political relations and interactions with other countries in the world, have created a wave of economic problems for its exporters. Also, the existence of problems in the field of transportation, the scattering of mining areas in the country, the wear and tear of mining machinery and the lack of use of modern technologies, along with customs problems, have stopped Iran's exports to a large extent. The export of cut stones or slabs in our country is often carried out to neighboring countries such as Iraq, India, China, Turkey and the countries of the Persian Gulf. The trade of stone in the world is about 25 billion dollars, the largest share of which belongs to the export of China with five billion dollars, and Turkey, neighboring Iran, also exported one billion dollars of stone last year. In the meantime, Iran has had a small share of about 180 million dollars in stone exports