Automotive and Transportation

Iran's automotive industry, after the oil industry, is considered the most active industry in the country. With the production of 1,395,421 passenger cars and 35,901 commercial vehicles in 2009, Iran has been recognized as the twelfth largest automaker in the world and the largest automaker in the Middle East.

In 2009, Iran ranked fifth in the world in terms of the growth rate of the automotive industry, after China, Taiwan, Romania, and India. Currently, about 500,000 people, equivalent to approximately 2.3 percent of the total workforce of the country, are directly employed in the automotive industry, and a large number are also working in its related industries.

In 2007, Iran exported about 500 million dollars worth of automobiles, and this figure increased to about 1 billion dollars by March 2009, indicating the high capacity of this industry in regional and international markets.

In 2008, about 51 percent of the country's automobile production belonged to Saipa Group and 43 percent to Iran Khodro. Other automakers including Bahman Group, Kerman Motor, Rakhsh Khodro, Kish Khodro, Raniran, Tractor Manufacturing, and Shahab Khodro together accounted for about 6 percent of the country's automobile production.

These companies produce a wide range of products including motorcycles, passenger cars, vans, light, medium, and heavy trucks, minibuses, large buses, and other commercial and public vehicles to meet the needs of the country.

Razi Metallurgy Research Center, since its establishment, has had close communication and cooperation with the automotive industry, transportation sector, and downstream industries and parts manufacturers in this field. The development of technical specifications and technical identification documents of many automobile parts in order to achieve production technical knowledge through reverse engineering has been carried out in this center.

During more than 43 years of activity, this center has had extensive cooperation with major automotive companies and related industries in designing and developing technical knowledge of manufacturing, supervision and quality control, and providing consulting services for the production of parts such as cylinder, cylinder head, crankshaft, camshaft, piston, brake drum, brake disc, wheel rim, valve, seats, and dozens of sensitive parts of light and heavy vehicles.