This profile concerns the Turkish company Hidromek, a family-owned enterprise that has become the first Turkish manufacturer of construction equipment to win an international reputation, after more than 40 years of development in the dynamic Turkish market. As Turkey aspires to becoming a full member of the European Union, it is especially appropriate to present to a wide international audience the leader of that country’s industry.

Turkey is not a well-known industrialised country, although in recent times its motor component and white goods sectors have made great strides forward with internationally accepted products. Despite the perennial instability of the economy, which has posed enormous challenges for companies like Hidromek, the company’s progress in recent years has nevertheless been impressive.

This is the fourth profile of the company presented in the European Service. The first edition was published in early 2006, the second in 2010 and the third in 2014. After 2009, when in common with the rest of the world, the construction equipment market in Turkey endured a horrendous period of frozen orders, lack of business and extreme uncertainty about the economic background, the picture turned positive with three years of double digit growth, meaning the total market in 2013 exceeded the previous record, set in 2007 before the crash.

The construction sector in Turkey enjoyed a brief period of prosperity between 2014 and 2016, but by 2017 there was already a notable decline in demand. By 2018, the debt-ridden economy was in serious decline, and the value of the Turkish Lira had taken a steep dive. Against this backdrop, Hidromek increasingly looked to its export markets to maintain a reasonable level of sales. Covid-19 was the major hurdle, but by 2020 both production and sales levels had started to recover.

There have been many changes in both the economy and the construction sector since the last report was published in 2014, but for Hidromek, perhaps the greatest change has been in the untimely death of its founder, Hasan Bozkurt, who passed away in November 2018.

The company continues to thrive and prosper under the leadership of his two sons, Ahmet and Mustafa.