Turkish firm to build coal-fired power plant

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

This photo shows Hattat Holding’s facilities for coal excavations in Amasra. The company plans to extract 10,000 tons of hard coal a year. Company photo

Turkish conglomerate Hattat Holding is set to boost coal excavations in the Black Sea Region, in line with recently declared state incentives on coal mining, and to construct two coal-fired thermal power plants that will have around 2,600 megawatt (mW) installed power, Vice Chairman İbrahim Hattat said in an interview with the Daily News.

Hattat stated that they aimed to extract 5 million tons of hard coal a year at the first stage in the province of Amasra in the Black Sea region, by doubling the amount to 10 million tons in advance. Coal excavations will begin next year after the facility construction is completed.

“We plan to build two thermal power plants in Amasra that will have 2,640 mW power,” said Hattat, noting that they would use domestic resources to generate electricity. He said the last incentives on coal mining would reflect positively on their works. But he also recalled that they had begun to work in this field almost seven years ago and they were still continuing in Amasra, Bartın and Zonguldak. “We produce 1,000 tons of coal a day in Zonguldak,” he said.

The investments for coal extraction in manufacturing, energy and mining are now able to benefit from incentives, according to a decision approved by the cabinet last week. The decision will allow for incentives to be given also to high-calorie coal as the scope of incentives had been limited by the low-calorie coal. Also, the Energy Ministry, which had recently discovered new lignite reserves, encourages fueling thermal power plants with coal via incentives.

2,500 tractor export to Sudan

Hattat Holding has signed a deal with Sudan to sell 2,500 tractors a year. “We are the largest tractor exporter in Turkey and selling tractors to 40 countries in the world,” Hattat said. The vice chairman said their goal was to increase their annual tractor exports to 9,000 in the next two years.

Hattat also recently bought a hydraulic steering plant of Mercedes. “We have completed the moving of 90 percent of the plant from Germany to Turkey. We plan to open the plant by the end of this year,” he said. “We will increase production capacity from 30,000 to 150,000 a year,” he added.