According to the International Stone Exhibition of Iran, Mahalat and Shahnameh in the south of the central province of Qutar are considered to be the rock producing countries, accounting for three percent of stone production and twelve percent of travertine stone production worldwide.

Twenty-five percent of the travertine ore reserves are now mined at a capacity of 20 million tons and employ 5,000 people in the province.

Mahallat Travertine ornamental stone is world renowned and 60% of the country's Travertine building stone is produced from the city's mines and extracts two and a half million tons of this type of stone annually.

Nearly three hundred stone processing plants alongside the mines of Mahallat County are a unique feature of the city that extracts stone in the same town with skilled and specialized forces.

Twenty-five processing workshops are equipped with state-of-the-art technology and have been deployed for the first time in the Middle East, specialized stone column cutting equipment and sophisticated shaping systems in the city's complex stone workshops this year.

This new system is capable of automatically cropping through photos and images sent to the digital device and crushing stone pillars of the desired dimensions and shapes.

Despite these unique capabilities and capacities, mines and stone processing plants face challenges, most notably domestic and foreign market downturns, lack of liquidity, lack of job security, high production costs, and lack of indigenous workers.

The secretary of Iranian Stone Association said: Specialized stone town in Mahallat city has been built and this city has been introduced as the pole of stone in the country and central province.

Hossein Soroush added: With the declining trend in this market, activists in this field should strive to boost their economic activity by expanding the export of various types of stones.

The secretary of the Iranian Stone Association stated that if the culture of export among the industrialists of the city is institutionalized and strongly supported by the government, with the empowerment of Iranian businessmen, the share of one percent of Iran's stone exports to the world will increase to four to five percent.

Soroush continued: Limited access to international banks for money transfers from other countries into the country is one of the problems in the field of stone that needs to be addressed in a principled way.

He said: Mahalat stone industry was under serious challenges during the sanctions era due to construction cuts and export decline and thirty-five percent of the city's stone and ornamental processing workshops and the rest of the workshops were fifty. Capacity percentages were active.

The head of the Mahalat Stone Association said: "Each Mahalah Stone Workshop has provided an average of fifteen employment opportunities, and with the boom in production and exports, this employment will increase to twenty."

He outlined the establishment of a specialized parent company for stone export in Mahallat and equipping stone processing workshops with up-to-date technology for export development strategies.

"Thirty-five percent of the city's stone and ornamental processing workshops are inactive, and the rest work at 50 percent of capacity," said Mahalat, the secretary of the Mahalat County Guilders Association.

Gholamreza Miri cited the slump in construction and the decline in exports, saying that the processed stone remained in the hands of manufacturers.

He cited the number of stone processing workshops in the city as three hundred units and continued: Each workshop now has twenty to sixty billion rials of processed stone without a buyer.

The workshops that processed the city's high-cost mines have now been shut down due to lack of proper storage and storage of their produce, said the secretary of the Maharashtra Guilders Association.

He added that these problems have led to a sixty-five percent decline in stone processing in the city's workshops.

He said: Lack of investment security, lack of incentives, reduced liquidity, inflation and increased taxes are other problems of stone production and processing in the city.

The Mahalat Miners Association official said: Mahalat miners with experience and expertise are working to extract stone using the latest technology.

Azir Mirzai added: For the first time in the country, the local mines in the city used diamond cutting wire technology and became popular in the country.

Forty percent of the city's mines are closed or semi-active because of the global market downturn and instability, he continued.

Mirzaei added that the cost of stone extraction is high because of the high cost of machinery and spare parts, high labor wages and transportation, and if the extractor does not have a buyer, the miner will inevitably close or close the business.

He said he hoped to flourish by holding the 8th International Exhibition of Stone and Related Industries and the entry of foreign businessmen and ambassadors to the Mahalat stone fair.

A member of the board of directors of the Mahalat-e Nimar International Stone Exhibition said: "With the launch of stone processing units, well-manufactured products that can compete with other countries' stones have become less export-oriented."

Alireza Karbala'i added: Artisans had to market and export their product, but due to the lack of export culture, they did not try to conquer the global markets and were satisfied with the domestic markets.

He said: "The conditions on the way of production due to the interbank sanctions have caused the producers to have difficulty in moving and circulating money, currency and exchange of goods and cannot easily follow the export debate."

Referring to the agreement reached between Iran and the P5 + 1 countries and lifting the sanctions, he said, he hopes that with the lifting of sanctions, export problems will be solved very high.

He added: "An entrepreneur with an effort to export and conquer new markets creates tens or hundreds of jobs in the country, which is very effective in reducing unemployment and its related problems."