Tractor firm maintains top spot in local market

KONYA - Anatolia News Agency

Türk Traktör, Turkey’s oldest tractor producer, active on five continents with exports to 90 different countries, has held onto the top spot in the Turkish agricultural sector that it has held for the past five years, with its impressive 2011 performance.

Türk Traktör General Manager İrfan Özdemir said 2011 was a fruitful year for the company, given the strong performance of the Turkish agricultural sector and the heavy rains, which led to a greater demand for farming equipment such as tractors.

“The tractor market grew roughly 62 percent and we got our share of the pie,” said Özdemir. Türk Traktör produced 40,000 tractors in 2011 and 9,600 of those were exported abroad. The company had a turnover of 1.8 billion Turkish Liras, with 227 million liras in net profits for 2011.

Özdemir told the Anatolia news agency that he expected 2012 to also be a strong year for Turkey’s agricultural sector due to the heavy rains and snows in Turkey this past winter. He expects Türk Traktür to produce more than 40,000 tractors in 2012, but could not give exact figures given the company’s dependence on the agricultural sector and factors such as rain fall and crop production.

Indian firm eyes market
Meanwhile, an Indian tractor firm, one of the top ten in the world, is getting ready to begin exporting to Turkey in the next couple of months, according to the company’s President of International Relations Rajiv Wahi, who spoke with the Anatolia news agency at the Global Tractor Sales Summit in Bursa on March 19.

The Indian company has been in production for 43 years and produces 50,000 tractors per year. With new factories being built in two different countries, the company plans on producing 80,000 tractors this year. Turkey ranks fourth in the world in tractor production following India, China and the United States, according to Wahi.