Speaking to Shana, Ali Pajouhan said the company had devised 5-year plans for its activities and signed commercialization contracts for its products.

He said each year the company updated its priorities given the circumstances and, given the sanctions, it now operated in a manner that the restrictions could not hurt its dynamism.

Pajouhan said that PRTC had so far signed 14 commercialization contracts for the chemicals, catalysts and processes it had developed.

“Catalysts are an important concern for the country and the petrochemical industry, and we have so far reached an acceptable level with regard to production of catalysts and strategic chemicals,” he said.

The CEO added that acquiring the technical savvy for production and commercialization of strategic items had become one of the greatest concerns of PRTC.

“We do not insist of developing the technical knowhow from the beginning in operations and in our contracts we have considered commercialization of technical knowhow by the company.”

He said PRTC was able to fully commercialize methanol catalyst and offer the license to a company which is now building one of the largest catalyst production plants with the highest catalyst production capacity in the country and the region.

PRTC has also signed another contract with a petrochemical plant which was in need of catalysts for inauguration, Pajouhan said. However, the foreign licensor did not provide the required catalyst and PRTC has offered it with the highest quality. “This catalyst has received the approval of two major European companies, and this has given the consumer company more confidence in its quality.

“We have been pursing production of polyethylene catalysts used in HDPE and LLDPE units for a long time, and we have produced both catalysts at various scales and have performed various tests on them. We hope that this year they will be fully produced on an industrial scale and be used permanently in petrochemical complexes.”

“We hope that by the end of this year, the LL Catalyst Unit, designed with the know-how of PRTC, will be launched by one of the local companies. With a 95% progress, the unit has significant capacity and can cover the entire country's needs. This catalyst is one of the most sophisticated catalysts and we hope that by the end of the year, we will launch the industrial plant.”

According to him, PRTC is also trying to produce polypropylene catalyst as one of the catalysts that was previously imported by the end of this calendar year to March 2020. The project has so far gained 93 percent completion.

There is a $450m market for industrial catalysts in Iran, while half of the widely-used catalysts can be domestically provided.