Ahmet Öksüz, Chairman of the Board of İstanbul Textile and Raw Materials Exporters’ Association (İTHİB) said; “With the ITM 2024 Exhibition, it will contribute to the development of our Turkish textile machinery sector for our domestic and proud Turkish textile machinery manufacturers to establish partnerships with foreign brands and to share know-how by realising cooperation models.”
“We consider 2023 as a lost year due to Kahramanmaraş earthquake”
In 2022, we exported 13 billion dollars worth of goods to 210 countries and regions. As the Turkish textile industry, we were aiming to complete our exports at the end of 2023 at the same rate as the previous year, but global trade passes through a recession. Our textile sector was highly affected by the earthquake disaster, which we can call the biggest disaster of the century that we experienced in February. We consider 2023 as ‘a lost year’ due to the great destruction caused by the earthquake centred in Kahramanmaraş, the distinguished city of our textile sector.
“We are happy to be able to maintain our share in the European and US markets”
The decline in our textile sector exports is around 10%. However, the rate of decline in textile imports from the EU and the USA, which are our biggest export markets, is much higher. Although the European Union countries and the USA experienced a 20% decline in textile imports, we are happy that we were able to maintain our shares in these markets.
As the textile sector, we export to more than 200 countries and regions. Our biggest export market is the European Union countries. We realise 40% of our total textile exports to the European Union, 15% to the former Eastern Bloc countries, 11% to Africa, 8% to the Middle East and 8% to the Americas.
“Our ability to develop products suitable for every market puts us ahead of our competitors”
Our market diversity and our ability to develop products suitable for every market puts us a few steps ahead of our competitors. When we look at our share in the imports of our neighbouring geography, we can say that we are in a good position.
To give an example from the distant geography; Turkey’s share in the textile imports of the USA increased from 1.6% to 2.9%. In the last 10 years, as the Turkish textile sector, we have managed to increase our ranking in the imports of the USA from 11th to 7th place.
“We will organise trade delegations to Cuba and the Dominican republic in 2024”
In 2023, with the support of our Ministry, we focused on Brazil, Chile, Dominican Republic and Australia markets. This year, we held many meetings in Cuba and the Dominican Republic in order to develop our bilateral trade relations.
In 2024, we plan to organise organisations such as trade delegations and procurement delegations to turn these meetings into trade potential. Within the scope of the Ministry of Trade’s Remote Countries Strategy, we plan to carry out strategic activities in markets where we cannot get enough shares.
“We will compensate our losses starting from the second half of 2024”
This year, while our exporters struggled with the increase in production costs, they also faced price pressure due to the decline in global freight prices and China’s dumped product exports. In terms of labour and energy costs, we remained in a disadvantageous position compared to our competitors.
In this context, we will feel the importance of the ‘Additional Customs Duties’ (İGV) increased by the Ministry of Trade in textile and ready-towear product groups much more strongly in 2024. In 2024, we anticipate that we will be able to compensate for our losses, especially from the second half of the year, with a much stronger export attack.
“As the textile sector, we came out of economic instabilities with strength”
Our textile sector has also faced global demand contraction in the past years. However, with the cooperation of the private sector and the state, we emerged stronger from all the contractions and political and economic instabilities in our neighbouring geography.
Thanks to the incentives provided by our government and the protection of our sector against the Asian market, our producers overcame the difficult processes by getting stronger with more investment, more production and more
employment.
“Turkey will continue to produce and export value-added”
The textile sector, which is one of the locomotive sectors of Turkey, will continue to produce and export value-added in this temporary period, as in its past experiences. As the textile and raw materials sector, which is the 5th largest supplier in the world and the 2nd largest supplier in the EU, our most important priority is not to lose our market share in international competition and to increase our share in the global league.
We will continue our work with our delegations and fairs that will provide market diversity in exports, our projects and promotional activities that will increase added value. In 2024, sustainability and value-added production will be among our most important agenda items. These will be the two most important issues that will differentiate us from our competitors.
“Turkey has become one of the leading countries in the world in terms of production in harmony with nature”
As the Turkish textile industry, we aim to achieve a high level of compliance with the European Green Deal norms by continuing our efforts in the field of sustainability at full speed. Turkey has developed a very good capability to produce sustainable products. We can say that we have become one of the leading countries in the world in terms of production in harmony with nature.
For 2024 and beyond, we want to announce and show this to the whole world with our supporting activities together with exhibition. In 2024, we will take initiatives to increase the quantity and quality of our delegations by holding our I of the World – New York event, which we started to organise in the USA in 2021, not only in New York but also in other states of the USA.
“Turkish textile machineries sector’s increasing share of global exports is proud”
Our textile sector should be handled as a whole. For this reason, Turkish textile machinery is of great importance for our country. World textile machinery exports are at the level of 31 billion dollars and Turkey ranks 8th with a share of 3% in global exports.
In 2011, Turkey’s share in the world textile machinery exports was 1%, but the continuous increase in its share in global exports in 10 years is a source of pride for our entire sector. However, the need for textile machines that use less water and energy is of great importance within the framework of our sector’s sustainability approach.
 said; “With the ITM 2024 Exhibition..){kind=link}