THE INTERNATIONAL REPORT
By Doug Jack
Comvex showcases Turkey’s expanding bus industry In my last International Report on Busworld, Kortrijk, Belgium, I wrote very little about the Turkish exhibitors. The largest numbers of exhibitors came from Germany, China and Turkey. Three weeks after Busworld, I went to Turkey to visit a factory and catch up with developments in the market. My trip included attending the Comvex exhibition of all kinds of commercial vehicles, from light vans upward. The top-of-the-range Mercedes-Benz Travego is built in Turkey.
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BUSRIDE | JANUARY.2014
Otokar
Mercedes-Benz
Otokar, one of the first bus manufacturers in Turkey, celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2013. The company has a large and very well-equipped factory at Sakarya, about two hours east of Istanbul, where it manufactures a wide range of military vehicles and a growing family of buses and coaches. Otokar is the largest Turkish manufacturer of mid-sized vehicles widely used in smaller towns on suburban routes and rural services. Otokar has progressively extended its range and expanded into export markets. Products now include low-entry midibuses, full-size low-floor city buses and higher-floor interurban models. Last year, the company won a contract to supply 750 Kent (the Turkish word for city) buses to IETT, Istanbul. It is amazing how Otokar can take on and complete sudden high-volume orders. It can only be done because the factory has flexible management and a highly-skilled workforce that has been trained on the full product range. They can switch between very different products while still maintaining the required quality standards.
The largest bus and coach factory in the country is that of Mercedes-Benz, based near Istanbul. In 2013 it came close to its annual capacity of 4,000 units, a mix of city buses, interurban and luxury coaches. The company is now proceeding with plans to increase capacity to 5,000 units annually. Mercedes-Benz has around 65 percent of the important market for full-size coaches in Turkey, used for both express services and tourism. Although low-cost airlines have started to provide competition, many passengers still prefer coaches. MAN Germany’s MAN has a large bus factory outside Ankara, the capital of Turkey. It formerly built higherfloor city buses for the domestic market and for export to neighboring countries, but now offers the more modern Lion’s City bus with either a full lowfloor or a low-entry layout. MAN also builds a range of interurban and luxury coaches in Turkey, including some that use the Neoplan brand. MAN builds many of these coaches for customers in Western Europe. busride.com