Footwear must contribute more to Turkey’s leather exports
23/07/2009
A senior figure in the Turkish footwear industry has said that the sector has become more mechanised in the last five years, but that it is still contributing too little to the country’s overall leather exports.
The value of Turkey's total leather sector export is $Q1.3 billion a year, of which only $350 million comes from footwear.
Celal Sezerler, president of the Aegean Region Footwear Industrialists Association, has said that footwear manufacturers in Turkey have installed more machinery in recent years, but that the industry still lags behind the tanning sector, for example, in terms of modernisation. He said: “The established production capacity of Turkey is 420 million pairs. In our region we have 3,500 production units; 38% of domestic shoe production belongs to us.”
He explained that production capacity has increased but that footwear manufacturers have still not been able to increase export revenues. He claimed that a lack of government support was the most important reason for this, but that a lack of stylists and designers was also to blame. He said the industry wanted to work with colleges and universities to help train a new generation of designers. He said: “Fashion is vital. We are very late to this subject but we are going to collaborate with academics on the training of young designers.”
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