ANKARA: Turkey’s injection molding machinery makers were unprepared for an onslaught of Asian imports 15 years ago, and found themselves nearly drowned by a wave of globalization.
But the companies that survived now see some opportunities, behind exports and strong domestic market growth — they say Turkey currently has Europe’s second-largest plastics processing sector.
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A contingent of 36 Turkish companies came to NPE 2015 in Orlando to make a push into the North and South American markets.
That’s twice as many companies from Turkey than came to NPE 2012, said Tamer Güven, a board member of the Ankara-based Turkish Machinery Group and general manager of Istanbul-based auxiliary equipment maker Inan Plastik Makinalari San. Tic. Ltd. Sti.
Turkey’s machinery sector has had major ups and down. It did well in the 1990s, but had a very tough time in the decade after 2000, as imports from Asia captured much of the local market, executives said.
We were so busy selling in the domestic market [in the 1990s] and trying to catch up with production that we couldn’t see the coming threat from Asia,” said Burc Agnan, vice president of injection press maker Hurmak Plastik Otomotiv Makina Imalat San. ve Tic. A.S. “We couldn’t invest enough in quality control, we couldn’t keep the quality up and we couldn’t expand our export markets.
So when the Asians seized the domestic market we had nothing left,” he said. “Injection molding machine makers were the worst affected by this and we had a very bad period in our industry. Almost everyone went bankrupt.”
Agnan and others at NPE were painting an optimistic picture, behind solid growth in Turkey’s plastics processing industry.
We have a very big potential to grow back up,” he said. “In our region, we are the alternative manufacturers. … We have a steady increasing demand from surrounding regions, from North Africa, from Central Europe, even Western Europe are demanding machinery.”
Today the country has only two domestic manufacturers of injection molding machines, compared with 75 in the 1990s.
