Turkish, Japanese companies to build steel facility for $500 million

MERSİN

AA Photo

Turkey’s Tosyalı Holding and Japan’s Toyo Kohan held the groundbreaking ceremony for a new flat steel production facility in the southern province of Mersin on Jan. 3, in an investment worth over $500 million.

Some 51 percent of the huge new facility is owned by Tosyalı Holding and 49 percent by Toya Kohan.

The production of Turkey’s highest added value flat steel will start in 20 months, Tosyalı Holding said in a written statement.

“Our aim is to decrease Turkey’s dependency on foreign countries in high tech steel products. We plan to produce such products with higher added value in Turkey. We’ll be creating over $300 million of additional annual export income to Turkey after the facility is completed,” said Tosyalı Holding Chairman Fuat Tosyalı.

He added that the products made at the facility will primarily be for the electronic and electrical sectors, followed by the construction and mechanical sectors.

The facility, which covers an area of 250,000 square meters in the organized industrial zone of the Osmaniye district in Mersin, is Tosyalı Holding’s 17th such facility, after recent investments in Montenegro and Algeria. The group aims to create a total of 10,000 jobs over the next three years.

Tosyalı Holding made exports worth a total of around $550 million in 2014 and aims to reach $805 million in exports in 2015, said the statement.

As for Toyo Kohan, the company’s chairman, Sumida Hirohiko, said the investment in Mersin indicated their bid to spread into new markets.