Cement, Glass, Ceramic and Soil Products Exporters’ Association (CGCEA) shared the data for 2020. Accordingly, the 2020 exports of the sectors within the union exceeded 3.9 billion dollars with a growth of 7.7 percent despite the pandemic.
Cement, Glass, Ceramic and Soil Products Exporters’ Association (CGCEA) shared the export data of and the added value these sectors created in 2020 at the online press conference. At the meeting held with participation of Mr. Erdem Çenesiz, the President of CGCEA Executive Board, Vice Presidents Feyyaz Ünal and Tansu Kumru, it was announced that exports of sectors within the Association in 2020 approached $ 4 billion.
“We maintained our steady growth”
Stating that the sectors within the Association maintained their steady growth in exports despite difficult conditions of the pandemic, CGCEA President Erdem Çenesiz said, “While the ceramic industry, which exports 1.3 billion dollars in 2020, grew by 6.6 percent, the cement industry has achieved a very important success and grown by 27.3 percent with its export of 1.1 billion dollars. Although the glass sector gave its priority to domestic market, it has reached very close figures to the previous year with an export of 865 million dollars. As a result, total export of all sectors within the Association exceeded $ 3.9 billion, approaching $ 4 billion”.
“We provide a domestic added value three times the average of Turkey”
Çenesiz, emphasizing that domestic added value created by cement, glass and ceramic industries is three times the average of Turkey, “local added value ratio of ceramic industry is 82 percent; that is, 82 Dollars of each 100 Dollars of export made by ceramic industry remains in the country. This ratio reaches 79 percent in the glass sector and 68 percent in the cement sector. Our three main sectors have created a domestic added value of 2.5 billion dollars in 2020 and provided this amount of net foreign exchange gain to our country. Again, from the total export of 27.6 billion dollars of these three main sectors in the last 10 years, the domestic added value and net foreign exchange created were approximately 21 billion dollars,” he said.
“Our strength in production, supply and logistics is the joint success of public and private sectors”
Stating that Turkey has shown its power in production, supply and logistics to the the entire world during the pandemic showed that expressing jawless, Çenesiz continued by saying; “Our country passed a very important test during the pandemic period and revealed that it is one of the most successful countries in the world in sustainable production, supply and logistics. Difficult conditions could not hinder our production; our factories have worked, our ports have continued their activities, our trucks have continued to ship to Europe. This situation, which is joint success of public and private sector, was also noticed by suppliers around the world, especially in Europe and the USA, thus we increased our share in distant markets even more. The fact that the countries we export the most are the USA, Israel, Germany, England, Italy and France, is another evidence of this situation. This wind will enable us continuing to expand into new markets and create added value for our country. In 2021, we aim to realize an export of 4.2 billion dollars with a growth of 7.5 percent. We believe that our exports will increase even more if we expand the sea and rail transportation in the country and take part in important trade centers or contracted logistics systems abroad.”
“Thanks to our design power, we started exporting ceramics to China, the world’s largest manufacturer”
Citing contributions of design culture gaining great importance and innovative products developed in recent years to the export of Turkey, Çenesiz said, “While products of European designers were presented as a source of proud at the past, now we have attracted worldwide acclaim with works of Turkish designers. Especially the new generation is doing very successful works with their knowledge, talent and selfconfidence. In this context, we follow trends closely and even determine trends in many products. Thanks to our design power, we started to sell
products even to China, the world’s largest ceramic manufacturer. In the glass industry, we broke new ground in the world with the aim of contributing to human health during the pandemic, and we developed V-Block Technology, a 100 percent domestic coating technology that neutralizes viruses and bacteria on glass surfaces.”