The First Cement Factory in Iran-1933

Historical studies indicated that the Iranians, like the Phoenicians, the Greeks and Romans, could produce cement that was able to withstand pressure.

So in this article, I want to introduce the first Cement producing factory in Iran, which played a crucial role in the industrial history of Iran. I will also post a video clip after this article as a visual aspect for it. I hope you enjoy it.

The first request for the exclusive production of cement in Iran was submitted to the National Council in 1916, but it did not reach a result due to the occupation of Iran in the First World War and political and social problems.?

After 1922, with the construction of the nationwide railway and the renovation of Tehran's buildings, Iran had become the fourth largest importer of cement in the world. So the government decided to build a cement factory and Mehdi Qolikhan Hedayat (the 21st Prime Minister of Iran) proposed and submitted a plan of the cement concession of Tehran which were mentioned in 14 articles, to the National Assembly for approval on September 27, 1927.

In 1927, the construction of the "Rey cement factory", which the process of buying the factory’s field started a couple of years before, became practical.?The construction of the Rey cement factory took about two years. The manager of this project was engineer Ali Qolikhan Sepahi (road and construction engineer), who later was elected to the position of factory manager and named as "Engineer Al-Dawlah".

In those days, the price of each kharwar of cement (Kharwar is a dry measure equal to 297 kg that a donkey or a horse can carry) that came from Russia and was imported through Baku finally reached 50 Tomans, and Engineer Al-Dawlah had promised that the price of cement which is produced in Rey cement factory would be three Tomans per Kharwar.

The result of preliminary geological studies for the factory's required raw material mines led to the selection of a location between "Sarsareh" Mountain (near the city of Rey, seven kilometers south of Tehran (at that time)) and "Hazrat Abdul Azim" Road near the "Cheshme Ali" Mountain along the "Bibi Shahrabano" mountain.

The construction of the factory's subsidiary buildings also started in September 1932 with a capital of 800 Tomans.

According to Ali Mansour, Iran's Minister of Internal Affairs, from 1929 to 1933, some sections of Iran's first cement factory were bought from Denmark’s FLSmidth Company and others from Sweden. Danish and Swedish experts installed high-quality machines in this factory.

On December 29, 1933, the Rey cement factory was officially opened by sending invitation cards to Known and famous characters all around the country, and the utilization of the factory immediately began.

The first plant of the Rey factory produced up to 100 tons per day. Because it had a lot of profit, in 1937, the government decided to import the necessary equipment to start another factory next to the first phase and the second unit of the Rey cement factory was activated. This new unit delivered 200 tons of cement a day. This cement factory was the only cement producer in Iran, and all the construction and modernization operations in Tehran during those days was with the produced cement from this factory.

This factory is located in the northeast of Rey City and District 20 of Tehran Municipality, on a land of about 90,000 square meters. Construction of the complex's buildings began in 1932. The complex was developed in 1981 in four stages by the services of German Companies such as AEG and Siemens in the electrical equipment sectors. The units of Rey Cement Factory were activated until March 1983, and due to the development of Tehran and along with the spread of pollution, the production of factory units ceased and finally, in 1984, the whole complex was totally shut down.

This factory, which is almost 90 years old, was included in the list of national monuments of Iran in 1997 and was named Tehran Industrial Heritage.

More than five hundred people were working in Iran's first cement factory. It includes various departments such as a Steam-electric power station with a power of one thousand and two hundred horses power, a stone crushing machine, a stone softening mill, a coal softening mill, a Cement Rotary Kiln, a Cement Grinding Mill, a Cement Packaging and Bagging Machine, a Cement Testing Laboratory and chemical analysis center, a cement plant Inspection and maintenance unit and Cement factory Spare parts Warehouse.

The raw materials required by this factory were found in abundance and close to the factory's location. As a result, it had the ability to produce Portland cement with the best quality and material. The materials' transferring was entirely by electrical devices, cranes, and railway lines. These lines were stretched throughout the factory, and small vehicles were moved on them to ease the transportation. The raw materials and pieces of stones were entered into the machinery, and after going through various stages and passing several machines within the baking processes, they were entered into the main cement mill (which was the highest machine in the factory). From there, the produced cement was moved into the pressure chamber tank. The Pressure chamber tank was the final place to fill cement bags and prepare them to be packaged and taken out of the factory.

The cement industry in Iran started about five years after Japan, 60 years after America, 70 years after Germany, and 100 years after England.?

Later, the number of Iranian cement factories gradually increased, and by the 1950s, Iran's annual cement production reached about 7 million tons/year; Of course, imports continued. In the 1960s, this number reached 17 million tons/year, and with the peak of investment in the cement industry in the 1980s, the amount of production reached 75 million tons/year in 1993, and Iran became the fourth cement producer in the world and the first cement exporter in the globe. Now, the capacity of Iran's cement industry is about 85 million tons/year, with the ability to export to 28 countries. Iran's first cement factory in Rey city was so significant that a stamp was printed for it, too.

One of the noteworthy points about Rey Cement Factory is the death of engineer Ahmad Ali Ebtahaj, a famous capitalist and Rey cement factory owner, who fell into a ravine on Haraz Road on April 24, 1976, and was killed which his corpse had never been found.?

Another important point is the presence of the country's oldest and largest relief, 12 meters high and 18 meters wide, near this factory on the vertical fuselage of a hill. This bas-relief demonstrated an image of a lion hunting scene by "Fath Ali Shah Qajar"(who was the second Shah (king) of the Qajar dynasty, which was an Iranian royal dynasty of Turkic origin, specifically from the Qajar tribe, ruling over Iran from 1789 to 1925) as he plunges a long spear between the lion's neck and back called pollen, decorated with poems by Mirza Gholamreza Esfahani, which were engraved on the stone.

The relief of Fath Ali Shah, as it appears from the poems on the edge sides of the inscription, was completed in 1867, which is five years before the death of Fath Ali Shah. It was designed by Abdullah Khan painter and sculpted by Agha Mohammad Qasim. It seems that the cement factory repaired and restored this historical relief in 1949, but unfortunately, this epic piece of history was destroyed and fell to the foot of the hill due to the mining the stones for the cement factory.

It should be mentioned that about 50% of this prominent inscription was removed and cut into pieces by Rey cement factory officials.

Also, after some years, about 10% of the relief, in which some inscriptions in Nastaliq script and a part of the hunted lion's tail are visible, were found in the abandoned building of Ray Cement Factory.

According to the Rey Cultural Heritage Department, the officials of this department have been trying to make the necessary arrangements for carrying the remained petroglyph out of the factory premises for a long time so that the public can visit it.

References:

Institute of Iranian Contemporary Historical Studies: https://www.iichs.ir/

https://www.flsmidth.com/

https://fa.wikipedia.org/

https://www.magiran.com/