Turkey Has the Capacity to Meet the World’s Need for Mask Fabric

Zeki Kıvanç, Deputy Chairman of Exporters Assembly of Turkey said Turkey follows China in the global mask production and noted that “We are capable of producing enough mask fabric for the world.”

Participating the live broadcast arranged by the Economic Journalists Association’s on the Instagram account “Kanalekonomi”, Zeki Kıvanç, Deputy Chairman of Exporters Assembly of Turkey and Board Member at Turkish Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges, the coronavirus process is a message for Turkey to accelerate its efforts for domestic production. Noting that Turkey comes second after China in mask production, Kıvanç added “We are capable of producing enough mask fabric for the world.” Having decided to support domestic production in mask fabric 9 years ago, Turkey is now gathering the fruits of that decision today.”

Kıvanç said that before 2011, mask fabric manufacturers were considering to stop production due to the disadvantageous conditions to compete against the imported fabrics and shut down their facilities, and “We cooperated with the bureaucracy. We made the producton of textile materials such as mask fabrics included in the incentive programs in Turkey. This way our facilities producing mask fabric have not been shut down and they have even expanded their business. They both fulfilled the need in the domestic market and became exporters. Our country has become the second largest nonwoven fabric producer in the world. Today we see how accurate that decision was. This reminded us once again how valuable domestic production is. Now our goal should be domestic production in every product.”

Kıvanç added that in Adana alone they have reached a daily production capacity of 6 million masks.