Turkey’s attractive market status with a deeply urbanised economy, high PET demand growth and location that provides ease of access to Central Asia, Middle East, North Africa and Southern Europe via excellent land and sea infrastructure has caught the eye of Thailand-headquartered polyester value chain producer Indorama Ventures Public Company Limited (IVL).

It has over the past two months made two acquisitions with its most recent being a 100% stake of Artenius TurkPET, based in Adana, Turkey. Artenius, which had been part of insolvent Spanish company La Seda de Barcelona, produces 130,000 tonnes/year of PET resin. IVL had in April announced a 51% stake in another Turkish PET producer SASA Polyester Sanayi http://www.plasticsandrubberasia.com/apr2014/company9.html Both SASA and Artenius Turkpet are situated adjacent to each other and this will lend further synergies to the deals.

“Our thrust continues to be to shape the businesses of IVL to grow profitably and to deliver attractive returns to our shareholders across cycles,” says Group CEO Aloke Lohia. “Indorama leadership in the PET value chain will provide significant synergies to TurkPET in order to deliver above average returns. Turkey and its encompassing region is a fast-growing market and our investments in Turkey are part of a well-defined strategy to bolster our global leadership and competitive advantage. We expect to make further follow-on investments in this thriving economy of 76 million consumers to replicate what we have built in Thailand as we see a similar opportunity to fully leverage on all our products portfolios.”

Lohia also said that the company’s domestic presence in key large markets helps it to grow with its global brand clients in the region.

“Indorama Ventures is looking to Turkey as a key market for serving Europe and the near Asia-Middle East markets. Our strategy of geographic diversity combined with vertical integration and horizontal expansion into high value-added (HVA) goods is epitomised by our Turkish entry as we can now serve our globally-branded fast-moving consumer goods customers with an integrated polymer commodity and fibre HVA portfolio in a relatively low-cost environment that is ideally situated to serve developing and mature markets on its doorstep,” Lohia concluded.