In the current special issue of Urethanes Technology International (Volume 40, Number 6) we take a look at the PU market in Türkiye. Here we have collected some of the graphs and charts published in that issue, along with a few additional statistics.
Türkiye is a country of 85m people, straddling the continents of Europe and Asia (with 97% of the land mass in Asia). Some 10% of the population live in East Thrace, the European sector of Türkiye. The country has a young population, meaning that it has a higher proportion of working age people – and a lower pension liability – than most developed countries.
Strategically Türkiye is ideally situated to serve the markets of Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Indeed Türkiye’s Çorum province is considered the geographical centre of the earth. As such it has become a manufacturing hub – ranked 12th in the world – with manufacturing added value accounting for €167.2bn ($181.9bn) of the country’s economy. Its key industries include white goods (for consumer and commercial use), furniture and automotive, all large consumers of polyurethane materials.
White goods
Its white goods manufacturers include global brands such as B/S/H (Bosch, Siemens, Gaggenau and Neff, among other sub-brands) and Whirlpool; and domestic manufacturers including Vestel (makers of Electra and Finlux, among other brands) and Arçelik, whose Beko brand is the top-selling home appliances brand in both Poland and UK. Türkiye is the world’s second largest white goods manufacturing nation, after China, but China’s industry is an order of magnitude bigger than Türkiye’s, making a huge 275m units per annum compared with Türkiye’s 35m units. To put this into perspective, third placed US produces 31m units and fourth placed Poland produces 29m units.
