Turkey to Become a Hub for the Mining Sector

Turkey's Mining Sector Hub Eti Bakır has relocated its Research and Development Centre, which has been operating since 2018, to a new location. The new R&D Centre, featuring 3,600 square meters of enclosed space, will position Turkey as the hub of the mining sector through its work in innovation and productivity. Thanks to new technologies developed at the R&D Centre, waste generated in copper production will be reintroduced into the economy. Eti Bakır, a group company of Cengiz Holding that places advanced technology, R&D and sustainability at the core of all its operations, has made a significant investment aimed at ensuring the most efficient use of mining resources and producing high-value-added products. Eti Bakır, which has established Turkey's largest R&D Centre in the mining sector in Samsun, has added another pioneering initiative to its work in technology and innovation. The centre, which combines advanced technology with sustainability, circular economy and innovation, will add value to the national economy through its work on improving product quality, increasing efficiency and developing zero-waste production technologies. Eti Bakır, which supplies 20 percent of total copper production in Turkey with its 80,000-tonne cathode copper production capacity, expressed satisfaction at establishing a world-class R&D Centre at its Samsun facilities. Deputy General Manager Asım Akbaş continued as follows: "Our new R&D Centre, which we have implemented, will not only position Samsun as a global base in terms of advanced mining technologies; it will also enable us to achieve better results in production processes across all group companies and affiliates of the holding."

Akbaş, providing information about the work to be conducted at the R&D centre, stated:

"We continue to invest in efficient and high-value-added production in the field of mining technologies. For us, sustainability is as important as innovation. Through work conducted at our new R&D centre in Samsun, we are exploring ways to increase product quality and efficiency on one hand, and reduce costs and environmental impacts on the other. With a 'Zero Waste' approach in mining, we will continue our R&D activities across all our facilities for the reduction, reuse and recycling of waste. In this direction, our work continues on recovering metals such as copper, cobalt and zinc contained in historical slag and currently produced slag." Emphasizing that private sector-university collaborations are of great importance in the development of Turkish industry, Akbaş continued: "We are signing joint projects with institutions known worldwide in the field of mining technologies. We work with research companies in Europe, the United States and Canada. We collaborate with Turkey's leading universities on various projects. We will provide our researchers at the R&D Centre, which we have implemented with our own equity and equipped with the world's most advanced systems, with opportunities to develop themselves and work with experts at the national and international level. We hope our centre will provide important services to the sector in terms of qualified human resources."