Polyester producer Sasa is investing $11.8 billion in Adana Yumurtalık. İbrahim Erdemoğlu, Chairman of Erdemoğlu Holding, saying that 7 foreign companies have already offered partnership to the petrochemical plant, added, “We will reach 13 million tons of raw material and chemical production capacity".
7 foreign suitors for Sasa “Petrochemicals”
The Petrochemical investment in Adana Yumurtalık, which will be realized by Sasa, one of Turkey's leading polyester producers incorporated by ERDEMOĞLU Holding in 2015, received partnership offers from 7 foreign companies. İbrahim Erdemoğlu, Chairman of Erdemoğlu Holding stated, “We will reach 13 million tons of raw materials and chemical production capacity in the petrochemical plants planned to be established with a total of 11.8-billion-dollar investment by 2031. We plan to operate this facility that will make a significant contribution to the reduction of Turkey's current account deficit within 5 different companies under the roof of Sasa. We can take on partners for these 5 companies that will operate as subsidiaries of Sasa. We are already receiving offers from foreign investors.” İbrahim Erdemoğlu stated that he could not disclose the names of the foreign organizations that offered partnership at this stage, yet he could only say that two of the companies offering partnership wanted to become operational partners and the remaining five wanted to be financial partners.
3 Japanese, 2 South Korean
İbrahim Erdemoğlu answered the questions after the meeting where Mehmet Şimşek, who had served as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance represented Dome Group Financial Consultancy company and İbrahim Turhan, former president of Borsa İstanbul represented Quanta Financial Consultancy, and Sasa’s 2-year projection and investment targets until 2031 were shared: "An EIA report is currently being prepared for Sasa Petrochemicals. We expect the report to be completed in October-November this year. After completing the expropriation works and the necessary permissions, we will start the project. We adopted the state system instead of central system in management. We will set up a separate company for each project and finance each of these companies separately. Within this scope, we will establish 5 companies in the coming period. We will evaluate the partnership offers, 3 of which from Japan, 2 from South Korea, one from Kuwait and one from Europe, when we start the project. Our goal is to be partners provided we have control of the companies.”
Reduce current account deficit
İbrahim Erdemoğlu said they acted with the vision of making Sasa a global company and explained: "Over 8 thousand additional jobs will be created within the scope of the project in Yumurtalık. Once the project is completed, $5.2 billion will be contributed to reducing the current account deficit. As Sasa, we produced 350 thousand tons of polyester in 2018. We plan to increase this number to 700 thousand tons this year and to 1.4 million tons in 2020. As Erdemoğlu Holding, which dates back to 1960, we are Turkey’s and world's largest manufacturer of machine-woven carpets with Merinos brand. When we incorporated Sasa in 2015, its turnover was around 400 million dollars. This year, we aim to increase our turnover to 786 million dollars with the additional fiber investment of 240 million dollars for 350 thousand tons, which we have made in addition to the existing capacity of Sasa. We will increase our turnover to 1.5 billion dollars in 2020, when we plan to invest 410 million dollars. We expect to reach 1.9-billion-dollar turnover in 2021, where we will provide 2 thousand 750 additional employment.”
The best halva under these conditions
Asked about his views on the general economic course, İbrahim Erdemoğlu made the following assessment: “We never complain as a requirement of our company culture. Acting with our late father, our founder Mehmet Erdemoğlu's 'time will not adapt to you, you should adapt to time' vision, we always act in accordance with the conditions. We try to make the best halva in today's conditions. We're doing business instead of complaining.”
We have always invested and increased the eggs
İbrahim Erdemoğlu said that they have completed the financing of the investments announced within the scope of SASA Polyester and added, “After completing the necessary procedures for Sasa Petrochemical investments, we will start the financing activities. We always invest our earnings in our companies. Think of the company as a chicken laying eggs. When this chicken laid eggs, we never ate them. We've always tried to make this egg two eggs. We hatched these eggs and tried to make two chickens. So, we invested our winnings in our company again. We have always multiplied our eggs by increasing one to 2, 2 to 4, then 8, 16. We always invested until the 90s. For example, when we had 50 eggs, we ate only one of them and invested the others in companies.”
Hürriyet Newspaper
