The Northern Marmara Highway, which greatly facilitates the transportation of Istanbul to the surrounding provinces and other regions, has also increased the industrial investment demands to Sakarya.
Sakarya, which has an important place in Turkey’s automotive exports and maintains its place in the 7th place after Istanbul, Kocaeli, Bursa, Izmir, Gaziantep, and Ankara, continues to attract attention with new transportation investments.
Following the commissioning of the TEM Izmit-1 Junction, the last 68-kilometer-long section of the 6th section of the Northern Marmara Highway, and the TEM-Akyazi intersections at the end of the project, on December 19, 2020, investment requests began to come to the Sakarya Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SATSO).
“Demands come from many sectors, especially automotive”
Akgun Altug, Chairman of the Board of SATSO, told Anadolu Agency (AA) that Sakarya has a geopolitical advantage due to its location on the transit route of the Anatolian Highway and the D-100 highway and its proximity to Istanbul.
Pointing out that with the commissioning of the Northern Marmara Highway, an important transportation axis was provided to the region, Altug said, “After the opening of the Northern Marmara Highway on December 19, there has been a very serious demand in our districts where the highway has exited. In the last 3 months, we have only 32 investment applications to SATSO, we are evaluating them.”
Referring to the fact that there are specialized OIZs in machinery and furniture in the northern districts of the city, Altug explained that they met with the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce and Industry and other large chambers based on the demands and that they are working on both enlarging the organized industrial zones and establishing new organized industrial zones.
Altug stated that they carried out the process in cooperation with the governor, mayors and local governors, and stated that the demands came from many sectors, especially automotive.
Stating that the automotive sub-industry organizations want to invest in Sakarya, Altug said, “Capacity will increase day by day. In this sense, many sectors stuck in narrow industrial areas in Istanbul are now demanding a place to go to Sakarya and nearby regions.”
“It is expected to contribute very seriously to employment”
Altug stated that when the new demands turn into investments, very serious contributions will be made to the employment in the city.
Explaining that they are planning new production areas, he continued as follows:
“We have an organized industrial zone (OIZ), which we think will make a significant contribution to the employment of the city. We are currently considering 5 new OIZs, but one of them is our SME Specialized OIZ study. The minimum area in the organized industrial zones is 3 thousand square meters. In the SME Specialization OIZ project, we are planning to produce 3 thousand square meters of areas. We know that the Turkish economy and production is mostly concentrated in small and medium-sized companies. We have a desire to deploy these small to medium-sized companies here. We will do the placement of them part by part. Many producers from outside of the city, especially from Istanbul, demand this OIZ too. We are progressing well.”
Noting that almost all of the companies that will invest in the city are export-oriented, Altug said, “We have a goal to increase our exports from approximately $6 billion to $10 billion. We think that we will reach the target much faster with these demands and the arrival of the companies.”
Source: AA / Translated by Irem Yildiz