Bozankaya to produce first indigenous metro car

Turkish transportation vehicles maker Bozankaya is ready to manufacture the country’s first indigenous metro car, company Chairman Aytunç Günay said yesterday.

“We have invested over 50 million euros in our rail transportation vehicles production facility,” Günay told Anadolu Agency (AA). He added that the company has the capacity to produce 300 metro and 300 electric-buses annually.

“We will take part in several projects with our high production capacity and in- ternational cooperations,” he stressed.

Bozankaya, in cooperation with Siemens, made Turkey’s first-ever metro car export this June, in a $46.1-million deal with the Bangkok metro line.

Günay said that the Bozankaya-Siemens joint venture will also produce 105 metro cars for the project in Thailand.

Dursun Çiçek, the company’s research and development (R&D) director, said Bozankaya is a strong brand in the area of eco-friendly, energy saving and noiseless rail systems and electric vehicles.

The company spent over 25 million euros on R&D projects in the last five years and earned over 100 million euros from the different products it developed in these projects.

The share of R&D expenditures in the company’s total sales is 7 percent, and it employs some 100 researchers and 1,000 employees in its production center in Ankara. He noted that in 2017 the global market size for rail systems was worth 176 billion euros. It is expected to reach 2.2 trillion euros in the next 10 years.

Turkey also plans to invest 70 billion euros in rail systems until 2035 and Bozankaya has already submitted a few projects to the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBITAK), Çiçek added. “We want to reduce Turkey’s external dependence for rail systems, fulfill its requirement with national resources and have a voice in the global market,” he said.

Bozankaya, founded in 1989 in Germany, moved to Turkey in 2003. It is known for producing Turkey’s first indigenous fully electric bus.