TEHRAN – There are currently 400 animal feed importing companies in Iran, of which only 70 are currently active, a board member of the Iranian Association of Feed Importers said.

According to Davoud Rangi, most of the mentioned companies were forced to stop importing due to banking and foreign currency problems.

He noted that the mentioned importing companies account for 30-40 percent of the country’s feed market, and the rest is imported by other bodies including Iran's Livestock Affairs Support Company.

Livestock Affairs Support Company accounted for 33 percent of the total animal feed imports into the country in the previous Iranian calendar year (ended on March 19), while the company imported only 10 up to 12 percent of the country’s feed requirements three years ago, Rangi said.

“The biggest problem of the Iranian feed market system is the lack of agility and slowness of processes,” the official added.

Last month, another member of the Iranian Association of Livestock Feed Importers had announced that the imports of animal feed dropped 31 percent since the beginning of the current Iranian calendar year (March 20) up to late July, compared to the same period in the past year.

Mohammad-Mehdi Nahavandi said that cornmeal import had a proper status in the mentioned time, while the imports of barley and soybean meals dropped.

Earlier in June, the managing director of Iran’s Livestock Affairs Support Company Hassan Abbasi Maroufan said that more than 1.8 million tons of raw materials for livestock feed were supplied to the country’s feed producers in 70 days since the beginning of the current year.

“Of course, the country's demand during this period was 2.2 million tons, which wasn’t met due to the slowness of the transportation system following the coronavirus outbreak,” the official said.

“Until a month ago, up to 15,000 tons of livestock feed was cleared from the customs every day and transported to the provinces, but now the daily amount of transportation has reached over 40,000 tons, which will soon fill the demand gap”, Maroufan explained.

“There are currently 2.2 million tons of livestock food stored in the country’s ports and are going through the process of health and standard controls for clearance and they will be on the market soon”, he said at the time.

EF/MA