Turkey’s Karsan opens factory to manufacture bus

Karsan has opened a new facility in Bursa to manufacture bus with Italy’s BredaMenarinibus under a strategic partnership deal.

Turkey’s first multi-brand vehicle manufacturer, Karsan, has opened a new facility in the northwestern province of Bursa to manufacture bus with Italy’s BredaMenarinibus under a strategic partnership deal it signed the leading bus manufacturer of Italy in September 2010.

Murat Selek, CEO of Karsan, said at the opening ceremony, “Karsan has begun producing, selluing and exporting buses in Bursa under a deal with BredaMenarinibus. We have begun trial production of BredaMenarinibus’s CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) and diesel models which ranges between 8 and 12 meters in January. The Municipality of Rome ordered 75 buses.”

“Our bus factory has an area of 10 thousand square metres. Our investments in the first three years will amount to 25 million euro. For the time being, our annual production will be 300-400 buses,” he said.

Roberto Ceraudo, CEO of BredaMenarinibus, said that they had added Karsan’s high production capacity to their 90-year experience. This deal between BredaMenarinibus and Karsan will lead to quite interesting innovations in the coming years, he added.

Founded in 1966 as the first and only multi-brand vehicle manufacturer of Turkey, Karsan provides services to the world’s leading brands in its modern end flexible production plants with more than 40 years of experience in the automotive sector. Karsan, having sold 7,379 units of vehicles in 2008, generated a turnover of 206.5 million Turkish lira (TL). Karsan is the producer of five different brands including its own one, aims to focus on product design and engineering works beginning from 2010 and to become an export-based production center in 2012.

Italian firm BredaMenarinibus is one of the well-establihed bus manufacturers which has contributed to the development of public transportation in Italy with over 30 thousand buses that it has produced in over 90 years. The company currently operates in its facility established on total 155 thousand square-meters area with 45 thousand square-meters closed area.

World Bulletin