As we have have been the last year completely into the works for our fibre producing partners, we had some interesting insights in this world and its challenges. In another blog I have already written about the problems of the unclear financial situation caused by the complexity of non-swifting. Now we would like to guide you a little into the world of heavy industry, backbone of not only Iranian economy.
A new world
Mostly I am written about banks and the circumstances I find notable. This is a little biased as I am working since 15 year in and around the banking industry. But with my first views catched with my first visits to Iran, I had the feeling of getting in touch with a whole new world. This petrochemical industry is, despite the roots of the exploitation oil and gas are traceable for a long time also to Germany, I had no deep contact to this industry.
As I have mentioned before, we were working for a company in our near environment, producing PP fibre and nonwoven. In this context, the polyolfines or other petrochemical products are just raw materials. More or less not so interesting when this big packs arrive on the plant and come to the production process. But seeing the production in one of this big cracker plants is something completely different. I had the chance to see the back bone of Iranian industry from at close range.
So I was really interested as we got the invitation to a site of one of the bigger companies in this sector. Idea behind was, that we evaluate the possibilities of starting some business together. Even the sanctions are not lifted, on the horizon the new area comes already in sight. So for us to get a deeper understanding we wanted to see, where they produce this polymers. We started our journey very early as we had to go about 3 hours away from Tehran. We were driving with our car through the still sleeping city and headed down the highway straight to to the plants. With the beginning of the day shift we reached the big area of this plant and started the day with the workers. The plant manager served us a breakfast as the worker also get, great yogurt, warm Iranian bread, honey and tomatoes and cucumber. Typical Iranian breakfast, but really delicious. After that, they showed us the whole plant. We saw the big reactors, the log heat pipes, this overwhelming big warehouses and finally the end product. In this case we had some LDPE granulates in our hands. We were more than four hours in this plant, talked a little bit to the workers and to the management, late in the evening we headed back. to Tehran.
Banks production topics diminish with this comparison
Comparing this to banks, it is the same old industry. the foundation are also laid several centuries ago. But this mass of processes, topics and things they have to deal with, it is once more a little bit hard to explain, why banks are so much slower in their development. Its so much easier to deal without the constant fear of occurring heavy accidents or massive pollution of environment with the smallest mistaken.
New challenges - new ideas
After that experience, we are very happy to sort out the possibilities for this company in Europe. As this is on of the rare privately held companies we would love to enter this new market for them. Now, as soon as we are back in Germany we start to develop the way of creating a market for them. And then we have to wait until sanctions lift has settled...
Lets see, when we can start into this market, that's so important for Iranian economy.
stay tuned
yours K-Street6 team