Gaziantep Chamber of Industry President Adnan Ünver said the following in his statement, “Despite the earthquake disaster we experienced in our region last year, we exported 10 billion 71 million 31 thousand dollars to 189 countries. In the first 11 months of 2024, we reached 9 billion 79 million 725 thousand dollars of export from Gaziantep. By the end of the year, we will have completed 2024, which was a difficult year both in domestic and international markets, with an export volume of 10 billion dollars.” Providing information about the city’s industry and production capacities, Ünver said, “The largest and most employed Organized Industrial Zone in Turkey is in Gaziantep. While the establishment of the 6th OIZ continues, this number will increase to 12 with the existing and newly established OIZ’s. While there are over 5,200 manufacturing companies in the city, we produce thousands of types of products in 160 areas.’’ While 59 companies from Gaziantep are amongst the top 1000 export companies of Turkey, 62 Gaziantep industrialists are among the ISO Turkey’s Top 1000 Industrial Enterprises. The export-import coverage ratio in Gaziantep is 148 percent. Gazicity makes the biggest contribution to our country’s economy with its current surplus.
“A Fair Every Month”
Noting that Gaziantep has been organizing fairs since the early 2000s, President Ünver said, “Our fairs also enable our companies to open up to new markets, introduce their production, follow innovations, and develop their capacities in exports and in the industry. Our Gaziantep Chamber of Industry also leads our city by adding new fairs to its fair journey organized in the 2000s. As the Gaziantep Chamber of Industry, we organize fairs in different sectors such as food-agriculture and technologies, shoes-slippers, combed cotton and textiles, construction and real estate, camping-caravans with the aim of ‘Gaziantep, the City of Fairs’ and ‘A Fair Every Month’.” Making evaluations for the Gaziantep Textile Machinery Fair GTM 2025, which will be held at the Middle East Fair Center between October 15-17, 2025 in cooperation with relevant public and non-governmental organizations, Adnan Ünver said, ‘’In this context, I find the Gaziantep Textile Machinery Fair, which will be organized for the textile sector, which forms the foundations of our city’s industry and is our largest sector today, very valuable and I believe that it will make significant contributions to the development of our sector.’’
New Technologies Await Visitors at the GTM Fair
Continuing evaluations regarding the Gaziantep Textile Machinery Fair, Ünver said, ‘’The GTM 2025 Textile Machinery Fair will bring together domestic and international machinery manufacturers producing machinery for the sector in our city and will play an important role in the establishment of new collaborations and commercial bridges.
I wish the fair from now, which will be organized for the development of the textile sector, one of the locomotive sectors of our country and city, to be beneficial and I would like to thank everyone whom have contributed.’’
‘Textile’ Amongst the Important Sectors of Our City
Gaziantep Chamber of Industry President Ünver said in personal evaluation, ‘’The textile sector is one of the most important sectors of our city as well as our country. In the January-November period of 2024, the textile sector ranked first with 36.1 percent in exports from our city. Our city has an important place in the world in the production of area rugs (carpet), yarn, pp bags, nonwoven fabrics, textile dyeing, tricot knitting, garments, combed cotton and fabric. In our city, which exports the most carpets in Turkey and is the leader in the world in area rug production, achieving all of our production on our own carpet machines is also amongst one of our biggest goals. We have very valuable companies producing in this field and we want to develop this process with a technology focus and keep the added value in our city.’’
High Value Added Product
Continuing his words, Ünver said, ‘’As in other fields, green and digital transformation has become a necessity for our textile sector for sustainability in the textile field. It seems that it will not be possible to increase exports above a certain level by increasing production capacity. For this, we need to increase R&D, P&D and innovation studies in order to produce high value-added products.
Such fairs and organizations to be organized together with our studies on technical textiles and defense industry will contribute to this process. We can also achieve efficiency in production by lean production and digitalization. At this point, Model Factory, which operates within our Chamber of Industry, continues its studies to support the processes of our industrialists in both lean and digitalization.''
Making statements about the EU Green Deal studies, Ünver said, ''We also have to be ready for the Carbon Border Adjustment targeted to be implemented in 2026 within the framework of the European Green Deal. Textile products constitute approximately 6 percent of the carbon footprint of the European Union (EU). Companies that cannot achieve environmentally friendly production and do not complete their digital development will not be able to find a place for themselves in the world of tomorrow. In 2019, we started our digital transformation initiative by saying 'Transformation Has Started in Industry'. We accelerated our work with the theme of ‘Efficiency and Green Future’ in 2021 and ‘Green Future’ in 2022. There is only 1 year left for the implementation of the Carbon Border Adjustment within the scope of the EU Green Deal.’
Carbon Footprint
Providing information about the work they have done within the scope of the green transformation roadmap, President Ünver said in his conclusion, ‘’We calculate the carbon footprint of our companies at international standards in our GSO-Vocational Training Center, determine their green transformation roadmaps, and guide our companies. We have calculated the carbon footprint of 78 companies to date, and one of the companies we serve has received a verification certificate from the international accredited board. As the only solution partner of TÜBİTAK in our region, we also invite our businesses to realize their green transformation with the grant supports provided by TÜBİTAK.’’
Gaziantep Chamber of Industry President Adnan Ünver
