Shipping service providers are booking flights to Tehran en masse. As the markets remain dour, Iran’s return to the international fold offers one rare growth market. Accordingly, bankers, insurers and class executives are all heading to the Middle Eastern republic looking to seal new business after eight years of sanctions.

Class societies RINA, Lloyd’s Register, Bureau Veritas, DNV GL have all intimated that they are looking at reentering the Iranian market.

“We hope that in a maximum of one month, we should have the first vessels coming into our class,” Paolo Moretti, general manager with RINA’s marine division, told Reuters yesterday.

Meanwhile, the managing director of the nation’s tanker firm, NITC, has said his ships are getting insurance fixed from Lloyd’s of London. The Standard P&I Club is among a number of insurers understood to have made visits to Tehran recently.

Korea and Chinese state-backed banks have made clear they are ready to bankroll NITC and fellow Iranian line’s IRISL’s big shopping list. The pair could order as much as $6.7bn of new ships in the coming months, one Korean analyst predicted earlier this week.