Bank now partner in local machinery firm

ISTANBUL

Turkish machinery company Hisarlar started the business by producing tractor cabins. Today, it manufactures various agricultural machinery products.

The EBRD is supporting the well-known Turkish producer of tractor cabins and agricultural machinery, Hisarlar, by participating in joint financing with the Darby Converging Europe Fund III.

The EBRD will account for up to 10 million euros out of the total financing of up to 22 million euros.

Hisarlar, established as a small blacksmith workshop about 40 years ago, quickly expanded and started producing agricultural machinery. Today it operates a plant in Eskişehir, 300 kilometers from Istanbul, and employs 800 people.

Besides producing Hisarlar-branded agricultural machinery, the company serves the biggest domestic and global original equipment manufacturers in tractor cabins and metal components segments.

The loan will be mostly used to reduce the company’s reliance on short-term financing, but also on replacing old equipment and machinery which has been operating at near-full capacity to produce Hisarlar’s popular equipment, tailored for the Turkish soil.

“This project opens the way for the EBRD to open more financial instruments to manufacturing companies. Hisarlar - a strong, forward looking home-grown company in a sector that employs a quarter of the Turkish workforce – is the kind of enterprise that will benefit from access to longer-term financing”, said Frederic Lucenet, EBRD Director for Manufacturing and Services sectors.

SME support mechanism

The Hisarlar investment was executed though the EBRD’s Local Enterprise Facility, a donor-supported mechanism for investment in SMEs in Turkey, the Balkans and the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean (SEMED countries.

A young blacksmith called Fazli Turker, who founded Hisarlar some 40 years ago, made a cabin – the first for a Turkish-built tractor years ago. Then he printed a leaflet promising that his cabins would “protect you from the heat and cold” and founded a company named after his village in central Anatolia. Today, Hisarlar produces tractor cabins with the most sophisticated modern safety features for all Turkish manufacturers, as well as making lots of agricultural machinery.