Flour Industry .. Turkey is the second biggest exporter in the world

Turkey is the 3rd biggest country in flour production in the world and has a share of 9 percent in total world flour exports.

Anatolia is the region where plantation and flour production was first made in the world. In the ancient times flour was produced in stone mortars in Anatolia. Later, production of flour by watermills began. Although the first modern flour plant  in Turkey was established in Istanbul in 1900s, the watermills numbering some 40,000 across the country still survived and dominated flour production activity until 1950s.

Number and capacity of modern flour plants increased significantly during 1960s. Number of plants existing in Turkey reached 309 by 1997, boosting flour production capacity to 6 million tons. During 1980s this number jumped to 584 and production capacity hit 14 million tons.

The boom in exports during 1990s and 2000s further accelerated the increase in number oof flour plants and the industry’s capacity. Currently, there are about 715 plants with a production capacity of 32.5 million tons (2010).

The executives in the industry believe  the sector is strong enough not to be effected by global crisis.

In 2009, there were 5 flour industry companies among top 500 industry companies of Turkey and another 10 among the next 500. This is considered to be a strong indicator for the role the sector has been playing to satisfy domestic consumption needs of the country as well as meet global demands.

Turkey consistently ranks high in the world flour trade according to FAO’s statistics. Efforts spent by the sector during the global crisis to meet domestic needs and gain a sustainable structure to the export potential of the industry, have generated fruitful results.

This fact was well verified when prices in Turkey were kept well under control when a price speculation originated from a drought in Russia early August and spread out to world markets

January 2012
compiled by Editor, BTT