Arvand Free Zone Development Plan

Client: Arvand Free Zone Organization

Location: Khuzestan Province, Iran

Commencement: August 2015

Completion: January 2016

Project description: Khuzestan Province has certain advantages over the other parts of the country. About 30% of the water of the country passes through the plains of this province and there are several plains suitable for farming and related industries. Major oil resources of the country are situated in this province. Existence of land border and Shalamcheh borderline with the neighbouring country, and the international airport gives this region a special privilege. In order to use the maximum capacity of this region, in 2003 government ratified development of 17,000h of this region. This ratified plan had several issues. One of these issues was the location of Abadan and Khorramshahr. A section of these cities was situated in the free zone and another section out of this zone. This problem caused a lot people’s protest. After the election of the eleventh government and the president’s trip to this region, two cities of Abadan and Khorramshahr were annexed to this zone and development of this zone with an area of 37,000 h began. This change of boundaries required the revision of the existing master plans and detailed plans and integration of the prepared urban plans.

Services Rah Shahr International Group became the consultant of Arvand Free Zone for second time in 2016 with the goal of preparing the detailed and master plan of the zone and the cities and integration of the prepared plans. SAM Rah Shahr was commissioned to prepare the environmental studies (phenomenon of dust and centers influencing the free zone), baseline environmental studies, environmental pollution studies, technical soil and land evaluation studies, environmental development strategies and identification & prediction of environmental impacts of the plan during the construction and operation phase.