The Karakert rock smelting factory, which is better known as the Glass Factory, has not been working for about 35 years. Recently, it was bought by Iranian businessmen, who are establishing a steel manufacturing plant there with an investment of $5,000,000.

The businessmen plan to produce steel phase actors in the first stage, and metal profiles, wires, and reinforcements in the second stage. A part of the raw materials for ingots, 65,000 tons, is planned to be obtained locally, and the rest to be imported from Iran. The founders have a similar factory in Iran, which works with a capacity of 320,000 tons per year. The steelmakers do not rule out that they will import the surplus of phased rods from the Iranian factory to Armenia and turn them into metal construction material, which will enable the production of 200,000 tons of rebar per year.

The production is planned to be carried out with state-of-the-art technologies in order to obtain high-quality wires, reinforcements, and profiles for the Armenian market. After meeting the demand of the local market, the products will be exported to Georgia as well.

There will be installed the most powerful unit in the plant, which is still under construction, produced in the Iranian factory by their specialists. It can work continuously and produce high-quality products. At the moment, about 110 people work in the Karakert factory, of which about 80 are from Lernagog and neighboring communities, and 30-35 workers are specialists in the field from Iran who are engaged in setting up production units. In the 2nd stage, the number of employees will be increased to 450 with an average salary of 190,000 drams.