Mitsui To Jointly Run Turkish Port For Car Shipments
20.03.2008
13 March 2008TOKYO (Nikkei)--Mitsui & Co. (8031) will help operate a port in Turkey that will specialize in automobiles, with an eye toward turning it into a trading hub to ship locally manufactured vehicles to Russia and Europe, The Nikkei learned Wednesday. The major trading house has taken a 29% stake in Autoport Terminal Operators SA for 1.5 billion yen, turning it into an equity-method affiliate. Mitsui has become the second-largest shareholder in the port operator after the Arkas Group, a major Turkish distribution firm, which controls 51%. Mitsui and Autoport Terminal Operators will jointly run the port, which is slated to be completed next month on the outskirts of Istanbul. With the capability of accommodating a car carrier about 290 meters long, the facility will be able to handle as much as 420,000 vehicles a year, including imports and exports. Mitsui, which conducts automobile trading around the world, will provide its expertise in storing and transporting vehicles. Mitsui plans to call on Japanese automakers that are expanding production in Turkey, such as Toyota Motor Corp. (7203) and Honda Motor Co. (7267), to make use of the port. Toyota, which rolls out almost 200,000 vehicles annually in Turkey, has plans to boost exports to Eastern Europe, where demand for new cars is growing. And Honda in January increased the annual production capacity of its Turkish plant from 30,000 vehicles to 50,000.
Meanwhile, automobile imports are also rising in Turkey on the back of economic growth. Mitsui projects that the nation's imports and exports of finished autos will surge from 1.2 million vehicles in 2007 to about 1.77 million in 2012. The firm hopes that the port will handle some 410,000 vehicles in 2012, or 23% of the nation's estimated total for that year.
