Diversifying the markets and petrochemical and polymeric products remains as one major policy pursued by Iran’s petrochemical industry in the post-sanctions era.

Accordingly, cargos of Iranian petrochemical products have been deployed to certain African countries like Algeria, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania as well as South Africa. Moreover, the marketing process for rising the volume of petchem exports to Africa has been accelerated with visits of delegations and participation at regional exhibitions.

Therefore, Iran seeks to reduce share of petchem exports in a number of traditional markets in order to diversify the market by exploring new customers especially among African states.

In line with the major policy, so far three strategies have been put on the agenda including establishment of regional sales offices, buying or renting warehouses for storage of petrochemical products as well as sales of plastic and petchem products using currencies of destination countries.

Director of the Commercial Affairs Department at Shiraz Petrochemical Company Abdolreza Zare has confirmed the taking of marketing measures for exports of urea products to African states saying “following the initiation of talks with Brazil, some African countries are now new market for exports of the urea produced at Shiraz petchem complex.”

Zarei deemed Mozambique as a destination for exports of petrochemical urea asserting “marketing and preliminary talks for shipment of the product to the African country have been carried out.”

Presently, Iran holds the capacity to produce about 5.5 million tons of Urea per year while the figure is expected to hit 20 million tons upon implementation of at least eight new petrochemical projects.

India, China, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and a number of states in east and southeast Asia currently mark major buyers of Iran’s urea while three cargos of the product were recently shipped to Brazil.

Source: MEHR