In 2017, the Turkish textile industry realized imports of 10 billion TL for investments such as yarn, weaving and knitting machines. TTTSD and TEMSAD signed a cooperation agreement to further prevent this import.
The Turkish textile industry’s commitment to imports in machinery investments, especially during growth periods, is constantly growing. Various initiatives are taking place in order to increase the use of domestic machinery and to prevent the import of machinery. Latest example for this is the agreement formed between Turkish Textile and Finishing Industrialists Association (TTTSD) and Turkish Textile Machinery Industrialists’ Association (TEMSAD). According to the signed agreement, the industry will cooperate to prevent other machine imports like the imports of last year in machinery such as yarn, weaving and knitting machines approximately of 10 billion TL.
TTTSD announced in a statement that the textile industry, which is one of the important items of exports, has started the work in order to prevent machinery imports reaching up to 10 billion TL. TTTSD Board of Directors Chairman Vehbi Canpolat said that they want to clear the current national economy account deficit originating from this problem. Canpolat said; “We aim to provide solutions in line with the needs of the industry with our cooperation with TEMSAD. We explain the importance of domestic and national machinery usage to our members. If our country has achieved the successes in textile today; this means that all stakeholders of our industry have a great contribution. If these stakeholders increase cooperation; our industry will go further and make more contribution to closing our country’s current account deficit.”
200-250 million dollars of textile finishing machinery imports for the Turkish textile industry
Canpolat said they signed the cooperation in order to design and manufacture original machinery in Turkey; reduce Turkey’s foreign dependency in this area and to prevent the current account deficit; by supporting the domestic machine production. The textile finishing industry will renew its production facilities in 2019; and increase its existing capacities; Canpolat said that this means more machinery investment will be needed. Canpolat; “We believe that the cooperation between our associations will help us to overcome the current account deficit; by meeting our machinery needs from the domestic market”.
TEMSAD Chairman Adil Nalbant emphasized the importance of creating an awareness; through action jointly taken by the industrialists of the machinery and finishing industry. Nalbant said that the Turkish textile machinery industry, especially in the field of textile finishing machinery is very advanced. Nalbant argued that although the Turkish machinery manufacturers are capable of establishing turnkey top quality paint shops in all parts of the world; there is a problem in importing 200-250 million dollar finishing machines. Nalbant finished his words as follows: “We need to solve this problem. We are not against importing the necessary machinery for the Turkish textile industry. But there is no logic in bringing the machines produced in Turkey; that we sell all over the world already back to Turkey; and transfer our resources to abroad. The level of engineering and technology that our machine manufacturers obtained is not lower than the machinery manufacturers abroad.”