The FINANCIAL — The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is continuing to support the agribusiness sector in Turkey with a €50 million loan to local tea and snacks producer, Doğuş Çay.
The Bank will finance the company’s far-reaching investment programme for 2015 and 2016 which includes construction of a new iced tea production line in Izmir, an upgrade of warehouses and potato chip production facilities in Aksaray, as well as the refinancing of existing short and mid-term loans, according to EBRD.
The EBRD will also help the company further improve its corporate governance and resource efficiency to make it more competitive in local and regional markets.
Gilles Mettetal, Director for Agribusiness at the EBRD, said: “With our financing we are helping this successful Turkish company to increase sales by launching new tea production lines and improve its potato chips business through investments in warehouses while advancing its corporate governance, efficiency and environmental standards.”
Founded in the early 1980s by brothers Alpaslan and Suleyman Karakan, Doğuş Çay started as a small tea trading company in Rize, in the eastern Black Sea region of Turkey, where tea farming remains a main economic driver. By the 1990s the brothers had transformed the enterprise from trading to processing and packaging, later diversifying into sugar packaging and the production of tomato paste and potato chips.
Doğuş Çay is currently one of the top three tea producers in Turkey, with a 13 per cent market share. It has a 17.5 per cent market share in the chips and snacks segment.
Enhancing the competitiveness of Turkish companies through innovation, better corporate governance and greater resource efficiency is a priority for the EBRD in Turkey where the Bank started investing in 2009.
It currently operates from offices in Istanbul, Ankara and Gaziantep. In 2014 Turkey became the leading recipient country of the EBRD, with new investments worth €1.4 billion.
To date, the EBRD has invested over €6 billion in Turkey through close to 160 projects in infrastructure, energy, agribusiness, industry and finance. The Bank has also mobilised over €12 billion for these ventures from other sources of financing.
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