As one of the leading manufacturers of industrial sewing and embroidery threads, Durak Tekstil, headquartered in Bursa, Turkey, managed to maintain its turnover on a US dollar basis in 2025 and is now planning a major capacity expansion.

During 2025, the company relocated the technologies at its existing manufacturing plant in China to its home site in Bursa and will retain the Chinese site solely as a procurement and marketing department. Licensing procedures for the company’s new production project, to be built on a 21-acre plot of land at the Bursa location, have now been completed.

By continuing to take strategic export-driven steps, the company has strengthened its resilience against local market fluctuations and raised its share of exports to around 60% of total sales.

“During 2025, when the Turkish textile sector faced significant difficulties, we managed to offset volume losses experienced with some of our sectoral customers by acquiring new customers and entering new markets,” said Saadet Oran, chair of Durak’s board of directors. “In challenging periods, the need for reliable partners and robust supply chains increases significantly and we have proved to be a reliable partner for both our local and global customers.”

 She added that throughout the year, ongoing discussions on customs duties and delays in reaching conclusions, along with trade wars continuing at various levels, negatively affected both consumption and order balances. In addition, the real exchange rate, which remained well below inflation, along with high interest rate levels, created challenges for both exports and profitability.

“By relocating our production facility in China to Türkiye we achieved a significant efficiency gain of approximately 20%, which provided us with a relative advantage in price competitiveness,” Oran said. “As a result, we maintained the previous year’s sales momentum and preserved our profitability and turnover levels. During this period, our capacity utilisation rate also reached around 80%, well above the average of the Turkish textile sector.”

Target markets

She noted that, with the support of the Turquality Brand Support Program, the company has identified target markets across five continents in the global arena, and that significant efforts are underway to extend the company’s strong presence in European markets to the US.

“The US market has very high potential and for this reason we have established a local company there. We are now working to gain deeper access to the market. In additoin, while China exports goods to the entire world, we are exporting to China from Türkiye. The share of exports in our sales and the number of our export markets continue to increase every year.”

She believes that this year many export markets will reopen globally.

“In Europe and the US, consumer markets are expected to become more dynamic with declining interest rates,” she said. “Compared to 2025, we believe higher sales levels will be achieved in these markets. We serve more than 20 different sectors and over 70 countries and in addition to our growth expectations in high value-added technical threads, we also anticipate a recovery in the textile and apparel sectors.”

www.durak.com