Carpet Industry in Turkey .. Your full guide 2023

Carpet Industry in Turkey is one of the best in the world, with a mix of high quality handmade rugs and large machine made carpet production

The majority of Turkey machine-made carpet production is carried out by companies located in Gaziantep. Other provinces where machine-made carpet production is intense can be stated as Kayseri and Istanbul.

Carpet Industry in Turkey

Carpet weaving is one of humanity’s earliest hand weaving techniques. Carpet weaving dates back to the years before Christ (Karahan, 1989). The first carpet was woven by Turkish tribes, according to the history of carpet weaving. Carpets, like historical records, reveal the social and economic structure of the time period in which they were made. Weaving machines were established with the growth of industry in the 18th century, and hand-made carpets entered a crucial time. Thus, throughout the Ottoman Empire’s latter stages, traditional hand-woven carpets were replaced with machine-woven carpets. Turkey has made significant advances in the manufacture of piece machine carpets and tuft carpets during the 2000s.

Turkey has made significant investments in the machine-made carpet business, and exports of machine-made carpets have steadily expanded since the 1990s.

Turkey’s carpet business has several advantages in the carpet industry such as:

• Turkey is a country that produces both wool yarn and synthetic yarn.
• It is close to the main markets (Middle East, Europe and Former USSR countries).
• Having a qualified and cheap labor force has a qualified labor force in the production of hand-woven carpets. It has experienced people in the machine carpet industry.
• It has liberal trade policies.
• It has flexible production.
• It has high competitive power.
• The fact that Turkish carpet is an important brand.
• Great importance is attached to quality, environment and human health, working conditions of workers.
• It has distribution channels, marketing network, effective R&D activities and automation-based technology use.
• It has a Customs Union agreement with the EU and free trade agreements with some other countries.

Machine carpet exports fell somewhat as a result of the worldwide recession in 2009. For many years, Turkey’s machine-made carpet exports have been among the industries that have expanded, and machine-made carpet exports climbed from 2010 to 2015.

Carpet industry output increased in the first quarter of 2016, decreased in the second quarter, and increased in the third and fourth quarters of 2016. In this scenario, although the number of machine-made carpets did not change, the value reduced by 5% to 1.6 billion dollars. As seen in Table 2.1, the growing trend in carpet sector output continues in 2017. In 2018, it climbed by 3% in value and was worth 1.9 billion dollars. Machine-made carpet exports hit their greatest value in three years in 2018, with a unit price of $3.06 in 2018.

The Turkish machine-made carpet exports are one of Turkish industries that has been growing for many years. Exports of machine-made carpet grew from 2011 to 2014. However, in 2015, the value increased by 14.8% over the previous year.

Turkish handmade rugs

Handmade carpet exports of the country follow a fluctuating course and increase and decrease independently of the crisis periods. While Turkey’s handmade carpet exports were 133 million dollars in 2013, exports have decreased continuously until 2019. Between 2011 and 2018, Turkey’s handmade carpet exports decreased by 61%. As can be seen from the table below, Turkish handmade carpet exports in 2019 increased by 9.5% on value basis to 56.1 million dollars compared to 2018.

In 2021, Turkish handmade carpet exports increased by 88.3% compared to the previous year and amounted to 59.2 million dollars.

Carpet industry between Turkey and the world

In recent years, the global carpet trade has grown substantially. Handmade carpets, machine-made carpets, and tufted carpets are handled in three major groupings in the global carpet trade. There are variances in the manufacturing processes, prices, customer profile, use and market structure of various carpet groupings.

In terms of manufacturing, the machine-carpet business is concentrated in China, India, Belgium, Turkey, America, Japan, Egypt, and Iran.

Companies in these nations weave and tuft carpets made mostly of natural and synthetic fibers.

Balta in Belgium, Oriental Weaver in Egypt, Suminoe Textile in Japan, Beaulieu, Interface, Mohawk Industries, and Shaw Industries in the United States are among the world’s biggest machine carpet manufacturers.

In terms of sales and marketing, total machine carpet imports in 2015 were 13.4 billion dollars, 13.3 billion dollars in 2016, 14.3 billion dollars in 2017, and 14.9 billion dollars in 2018.

Table 2.1 shows that the United States, Germany, Japan, England, and Saudi Arabia are among the main nations in terms of global machine carpet imports. These nations account for 46% of global machine-made carpet imports.

Turkey is the biggest machine carpet exporter in the world. The ranking of the countries in the world machine carpet export is given in Table 2.2.

Turkey, China, India, Belgium, and the Netherlands are the global leaders in machine-made carpet exports. While Turkey controls around 29% of the carpet market, China comes in second (19.8% market share).

It is expected that global carpet manufacturing, which was 42 billion dollars in 2019, would expand by roughly 4% until 2030, with a market size of 65 billion dollars.

China leads the world in carpet and rug manufacturing with a 22.7% market share, followed by the United States with a 21% market share, and Turkey with a 7% market share.

Global carpet and rug production is expected to grow at a 2.7% annual average rate in the United States, 7.8% in China, and 9.9% in Turkey until 2030.