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activities in energy-saving technologies.
The EBRD has invested €11.5bn in almost 300 projects in Turkey over the past 10 years, with 97% of the bank’s investments in the country ploughed into the private sector.
EBRD has provided a €16mn loan to Turkey’s leading exporter of organic dried fruits and nuts, Isik Organic, to enable it to expand its production and reduce waste.
The financing includes a €1.5mn loan from the Clean Technology Fund under the EBRD’s Near Zero Waste programme, the development bank said in a statement on September 17.
“The EBRD funds will enable the company to build a new hazelnut processing plant in Eregli, in the Black Sea region of Turkey, and finance the expansion of freeze-dried fruit production at its Afyon plant in Central Anatolia.”
The loan will also cover increased working capital needs, which will allow the company to support more organic farmers across six different regions of Turkey.
Isik Organic exports to more than 30 countries, including Australia, Canada, member states of the European Union, Japan and the US. It is benefiting from the growing global appetite for organic produce.
The EBRD, Societe Generale and Black Sea Trade and Development Bank (BSTDB) have collectively provided a €175mn loan for the construction of a new Istanbul Metro line.
The 13-kilometre line will complement the three existing lines on the Asian side of the city.
“The EBRD has arranged a €97.5mn syndicated loan, of which Societe Generale will provide a tranche of €20 million while an additional loan of €77.5 million will be extended separately by the BSTDB,” the EBRD said in a statement on September 26.
The total cost of the project is €410mn.
The new line is expected to add a total of 350,000 passengers a day to the city’s rail transport network.
South Korean contractor GS Engineering & Construction Corp said on October 7 it is to finance nearly half of a $1.3bn petrochemical plant in Adana Province, near Turkey’s border with Syria.
The company announced that it has bought 49% of Ceyhan Petrokimya Endustriyel Yatrim (CPEY), a unit of Turkish conglomerate Ronesans Holding that is to construct a propylene and polypropylene plant with an annual capacity of 450,000 tonnes/year. That would be the equivalent of one- quarter of Turkey’s polypropylene. The envisaged date for full-capacity production should fall in 2024.
The volume of mergers and acquisitions that took place in Turkey between January and mid-September amounted to a mere $1.3bn, according to a study by KMPG.
“This has not been a very promising year to date but M&A activity may gain some traction towards the end of the year. The volume could reach $3bn at the end of 2019,” said Musfik Cantekinler at KMPG Turkey.
Earlier predictions had put the expected M&A volume at around $7.4bn for this year. In 2018, Turkey saw some $12bn worth of M&A.
42 TURKEY Country Report October 2019 www.intellinews.com