Mercedes-Benz is celebrating the 20th anniversary of its state-of-the-art bus production facility in the Hoşdere area of Istanbul, which is in East Thrace, on the European side of the city on the Bosphorus (Marmara Region).
MB Türk has one foot in Europe and one in Asia: the bus production plant in Istanbul-Hoşdere and a truck plant in Aksaray, in the Central Anatolian region.
Hartmut Schick, Head of Daimler Buses and since March 1, 2009 chairman of the Supervisory Board of Mercedes-Benz Türk A.Ş., looks back on 20-year success story for the Hoşdere plant: “Hoşdere is a very important location for Daimler Buses, with two-thirds of the buses and coaches produced here being exported to Europe and to the Near and Middle East.
The facility is a highly significant player in Daimler Buses’ co-ordinated European production system. This is further underscored by the investment that the Group has made since the launch in 1967 so far into its Turkish subsidiary, with 885 million euros going into the plants in Istanbul and Aksaray.”
The state-of-the-art bus manufacturing facility in Istanbul’s Hoşdere district, which at the time featured a covered production area of 30,000 m2 and had an annual production capacity of 2000 vehicles, took up operations in the summer of 1995. Work to develop the plant has continued steadily over the last 20 years. Quite recently the 75,000th bus has been produced in this plant.
Hoşdere nowadays incorporates every aspect of the process chain of bus production, from the body-in-white, cathodic dip priming, interior fit-out and paintwork to final assembly. It is firmly established as a key player in the internationally co-ordinated production system for Daimler Buses.
