GÜBRETAŞ, the leading company in its sector, completed 2019, in which it concentrated on new investments and activities to popularize conscious agriculture, with a consolidated turnover of 4.3 billion TL. GÜBRETAŞ, which accelerates investments in the new year with the goal of sustainable growth, aims to maintain its leadership by increasing its solid fertilizer sales to over 1.8 million tons.

Chairman of the Board of Directors Dr. Fahrettin Poyraz stated that GÜBRETAŞ realized an investment budget of 129.5 million TL within the scope of domestic and international facility investment activities initiated in 2019, and said, “With the total investment budget of 267 million TL that we determined in 2020, we aim to reach the record in the history of the company in this field by rapidly continuing the investments.” "We aim," he said. President Poyraz also stated that during the global virus epidemic, GÜBRETAŞ and other Agricultural Credit subsidiaries continued their activities uninterruptedly and continued to fulfill their responsibilities for the continuity of agricultural activities in terms of food safety and social health in our country.

GÜBRETAŞ (Gübre Fabrikaları T.A.Ş.) shared its 2020 targets in a statement on KAP. GÜBRETAŞ, which continues its leadership in the sector with its facility investments, R&D studies and activities to popularize conscious agriculture, especially in recent years, aims to continue its growth in 2020.

Making an evaluation about the announced 2020 targets, GÜBRETAŞ Chairman of the Board of Directors Dr. Fahrettin Poyraz stated the operational results of the company in 2019 as follows: "Continuing its leadership in the sector with its 68 years of corporate experience, GÜBRETAŞ completed the previous year with sales of 1 million 655 thousand tons in solid fertilizer, while it increased by 15% compared to the previous year with 47.7 thousand tons in liquid-powder fertilizer sales." recorded an increase and reached a new record in the company's history. "We took the benefit we generated for the national economy one step further by increasing our sales amount in exports by 34%," he summarized.

FARMERS' FERTILIZER DEMANDS ARE MEET IN THE FAST START OF THE SEASON

Pointing out that 2019, which was entered with the impact of economic fluctuation, was completed with a process in which the Turkish economy returned to normal despite the burden of local elections, Fahrettin Poyraz said, “Exchange rates are more stable compared to 2018, interest rates have decreased, raw material and commodity prices have decreased slightly in international markets, and domestic fertilizer prices have increased significantly.” As a result of the decrease in prices, there was a demand above expectations in the first half of the year. Afterwards, there was a decrease in demand because agricultural areas did not receive sufficient rainfall due to the climate conditions. However, despite this, 2019 ended with 6 million tons of fertilizer consumption in our country. "As GÜBRETAŞ, we have met a significant part of the total demand on our own," he said.

Emphasizing that increasing GÜBRETAŞ's production and sales amounts is a priority among its 2020 targets, Chairman of the Board of Directors Poyraz said, "With the responsibility of being a sector pioneer, we will further increase the growth rate this year and increase our solid fertilizer production by 9 percent compared to last year, reaching 637 thousand tons, and increasing our sales amount by 12 percent." We aim to increase it to 1 million 846 thousand tons. “Thus, we will maintain our leadership in the market by keeping our market share above 30 percent,” he said.

Stating that they made a quick start to 2020 by completing the spring season preparations in advance to achieve these goals, Fahrettin Poyraz said, "We hope that 2020 will be a year where growth continues in terms of agricultural production, despite the coronavirus epidemic that has recently affected our country as well as the whole world. During this global epidemic, the strategic importance of the agricultural sector in terms of access to healthy and safe food has increased all over the world. Because in this process, agriculture is one of the sectors that should continue to operate actively. "We, together with GÜBRETAŞ and our other subsidiary companies, continue to meet agricultural input needs by continuing our activities without interruption in order to overcome this difficult process without loss," he said.

Describing GÜBRETAŞ's efforts to meet the fertilizer needs of farmers all over Turkey, especially in the busy season between February and April, Poyraz said, "For this purpose, we delivered our products to our dealers and cooperatives with the shipments we started from January. Nowadays, we continue to ship at the same pace to meet the additional need for fertilizers. As we stated in our PDP statement, we continue our activities uninterruptedly for the food security of our country and the health of our citizens, with the awareness of being one of the important stakeholders of the strategically important agricultural sector. So far, our company has supplied more than 18% more chemical fertilizers to the Turkish market in the 3-month period compared to the same period of the previous year. "In this way, we are trying to make it easier for our farmers to access all kinds of fertilizers they need for different agricultural plants," he said.

Fahrettin Poyraz stated that, as the Agricultural Credit Cooperatives family, which is also the main shareholder of GÜBRETAŞ, they play an active role in all processes from pre-planting to the delivery of the products from the field to the table, and added: “For this purpose, on the one hand, we are trying to increase the benefit we offer to farmers with our companies that provide input to agriculture, such as GÜBRETAŞ, and on the other hand, We are trying to supply the quality and healthy foods that all our citizens need through the end link of the chain, such as Agricultural Credit markets, where the products harvested by our producers are evaluated. We create added value for our country by protecting both our producers and consumers at all stages from seed to table. "We are trying to maintain the leading role we have assumed in the agricultural sector in every dimension of agriculture during the global epidemic," he said.

INVESTMENTS ARE DOUBLING AND GAINING SPEED IN 2020

Stating that GÜBRETAŞ started 2020 with bigger goals, Poyraz stated that they focused on efficiency and sustainable growth in every field. Stating that they determined these targets by taking into account the growth potential in the agricultural sector, Fahrettin Poyraz said, "GÜBRETAŞ, the largest company of the Agricultural Credit Cooperatives family, one of the basic building blocks of Turkish agriculture; "It will achieve its 2020 targets with its strong and widespread dealer network, innovative vision and dynamic human resources," he said.

Stating that the company focused heavily on facility investments in 2019, Fahrettin Poyraz pointed out that GÜBRETAŞ continued to produce added value for the Turkish economy during this period. Poyraz said, "GÜBRETAŞ continued to make important investments in 2019, which was a difficult year in terms of making investments. While we completed our new facilities in İskenderun, including a state-of-the-art logistics center, regional directorate and laboratory, with an investment of 59 million TL, in a short period of 11 months and put them into operation in the autumn, we increased our total storage capacity by 35 percent thanks to this investment. "Thus, we increased our operational efficiency in terms of both logistics opportunities and delivering our products to our farmers in the provinces receiving service from that region," he said.

Stating that GÜBRETAŞ, which will complete the pier strengthening project at İskenderun Facilities in April, has also initiated important investments in Kocaeli, Chairman of the Board of Directors Poyraz said, "We have also made an important progress in the Harbor Filling Project, which we started to build in 2019 at Yarımca Facilities. We will complete the first phase of this project this summer with an investment of 45 million TL. We also continue to build storage tanks in Yarımca with a budget of 15 million TL. "In addition, we will complete the pilot plant installation within the scope of the microbial fertilizer project and the planning phase of the improvement works in the NPK-2 unit this year," he said.

Stating that GÜBRETAŞ invested 129.5 million TL in domestic and international facility investment activities last year, Poyraz said, “This year, we have raised the bar even further in our company's investment budget. We aim to rapidly continue our facility investments in 2020 and reach the record in the company's history in this field with a total investment budget of 267 million TL. "This amount is more than twice the investment amount we made last year," he said.

GÜBRETAŞ Chairman of the Board of Directors, Fahrettin Poyraz, explained the intended benefits of the investments for the company: "Thanks to these investments that strengthen our sector leadership and prioritize environmentally friendly production, we increase our production diversity and cost advantages. "Our main goal in the completed and future investments is to generate employment and labor force while providing benefits to our farmers and the agricultural sector, and to offer added value for our investors by increasing sales profitability," he summarized.

GÜBRETAŞ'S CREDIT RATING WAS ALSO ANNOUNCED

Stating that they have taken some recent steps to carry GÜBRETAŞ to a stronger future with new investments, Fahrettin Poyraz said, "With the decision of the Board of Directors we took in July 2019, we started the lease certificate issuance process to create financing through capital markets and to diversify the resource structure of our company. With this decision, GÜBRETAŞ has taken an important step in reaching funds that can invest in products that provide interest-free returns while increasing its resource types. "GÜBRETAŞ, which will make its repayments based on the profit from the products it sells, will thus improve its borrowing costs," he said.

Reminding that GÜBRETAŞ's lease certificate credit rating score was announced recently, Poyraz said, "As a result of the evaluation made by a credit rating company, the credit assessment score of GÜBRETAŞ's lease certificate was determined as TR A1, which is the strongest debt payment ability." "This is a pleasing development for us," he said.

Stating that they started this year with two important steps regarding the company's subsidiary structure, Fahrettin Poyraz said, "As a result of the tender we announced in January, GÜBRETAŞ established Nbulkgas Deniz İşletmecilik Ltd., a 100 percent shareholder operating in the maritime transportation sector. We signed the share transfer agreement by reaching an agreement on the transfer of shares in Şti. for approximately 75 million dollars. On the other hand, the court decision regarding the gold mine site belonging to our company in Söğüt district of Bilecik was concluded on December 30, 2019. As the Board of Directors, in January, we established GÜBRETAŞ Maden Yatırımları A.Ş., in which we hold a 100 percent share, to operate nationally and internationally in order to realize mining investments, which are among the company's fields of activity. "We decided to establish the company," he said.

R&D AND CONSCIOUS AGRICULTURE DISSEMINATION ACTIVITIES WILL INCREASE

"While we are trying to take GÜBRETAŞ's operational and financial targets to the next level in the new year, we also aim to continue with increasing momentum the R&D studies and conscious agriculture dissemination activities that we pioneer in the sector," said Poyraz, adding that significant successes were achieved in this regard in 2019.

Fahrettin Poyraz said, “Especially as a result of the intense efforts of our company's General Manager İbrahim Bey and his work team, significant progress has been made in these areas. GÜBRETAŞ R&D Center, which started operating in May 2018, continued to implement the projects it put on its agenda. In this context, our company took an important step in public, university and private sector cooperation with the TAGEM project launched two years ago, and in addition started collaborations with Gebze Technical University and Yıldız Technical University in 2019. "We will all see the beneficial results of these projects and collaborations, which bring innovative approaches to the agricultural sector, in the coming period," he said.

Stating that GÜBRETAŞ continues to carry out important activities in order to popularize conscious agricultural practices in our country and raise awareness of producers, Poyraz said, "In this context, our company reached more than 42 thousand agricultural producers at approximately 4,500 points in 2019. In the model production area applications applied at 27 points, it made significant contributions to obtaining efficiency results above the averages of Turkey and the region. "Our field team will continue to increase agricultural consultancy and model production area applications this year," he said.

Stating that GÜBRETAŞ will continue to add value to the agricultural sector and these lands with its deep-rooted corporate knowledge and visionary approach, Fahrettin Poyraz said, "I wholeheartedly congratulate all our managers and employees who contributed to these works and my Agricultural Credit Cooperatives team who supported this."