Gol-e-Gohar Iron Ore’s long awaited plan to build a palletizing plant with an annual capacity of 5 million tonnes is almost complete. Gol-e-Gohar, which controls deposits of 1.135 billion tonnes of iron ore, will commission a new palletizing 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 EUR 140 million. The new facility will be the largest palletizing plant in Iran. The contract for the construction of the palletizing plant was signed in 2003 with a consortium including local construction company Concrete Industries & Copper Investment Consortium accounting for a 53% share, Finland-based Outokumpu’s technology division Outotec accounting for 33%, Swiss-based ABB with 9% and Spain-based Taim with 5%. 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 palletizing plant, the company is also planning a beneficiation and desulphurization plant with its start up slated for February 2009. Work has already begun on this plant which will have an annual capacity of 550,000tn of haematite concentrate with Fe content of 68% and an annual 500,000tn desulphurization capacity for magnetite concentrate. The plant will supplement the company’s existing beneficiation facilities, which have a total capacity of 7 million tonne per year.
