APM Terminals is looking for new investment opportunities in Turkey, which currently suffers from a lack of facilities for mega-ships, reported the Hürriyet Daily News.
Mogens Wolf Larsen, Turkey Chief at APM Terminals, said: “We have been looking for new investments in Turkey because it is a very interesting market for us,
“The fundamentals of the Turkish market with the respect of population growth, the share of the young population, the growth pace of Turkish GDP and Turkey’s geographical location as a potential hub for Central Asia make it very interesting for us and for our industry. We want to invest more in Turkey in this vein.”
APM Terminals has already committed to invest more than US$400 million in the port at Izmir, to transform it into the largest container terminal in the Aegeon. Operating under a 28-year concession agreement with Petkim, the facility will be 16m deep and a quay 700m long, with the capacity to handle 420,000 annually.
The terminal operator is now looking to expand to other parts of Turkey, with Larsen commenting: “We are very much interested in the whole Sea of Marmara. On the European side, Ambarlı for instance, and another in İzmit Bay,
“We are in dialogue with most of the current port operators and also with the potential promoters of new projects. We are also interested in the Mediterranean side of Turkey, somewhere from Mersin to İskenderun. İzmir, where we are today, Istanbul and the Mediterranean side are the places we want to invest more in,
“And we say that for the next 30-40 years at least, Turkey is the right place to be.”
