Turkish giant, Yildirim Holding, has the United States in its sights as the transport and industrial conglomerate aims to become a top ten global terminal operator.
The Istanbul-based company is in talks with pension funds in the US and Canada over potential partnerships to acquire US port assets and plans to raise between $500m and $1bn to finance the deals through the sale of 20-30% of its shares in the company’s port unit, Yilport Holding.
Chief executive and president of Yildirim Holding, Robert Yüksel Yildirim, told Port Strategy: “The funds we will receive by the sale of Yilport shares will be channelled in new acquisitions for the growth of our port business.”
“Yilport Holding targets to be listed in among the top ten internal terminal and port operators by 2025,” he added.
Potential targets in the US include Ports America, owned by Highstar Capital, as well as some further afield in Latin American. Yilport Holding sees expansion into the US as an important part of its growth strategy, believing there to be new opportunities in the region.
Mr Yildirim told Port Strategy: “We believe the United States has a potential in port mergers and acquisitions. The ports are not so profitable in the US right now.
“This is due to lack of new investments in infrastructure, superstructure, automation, and new technology. As far as we can see, there is a great growth potential in the United States terminals, only after making necessary investments in the ports. That will trigger profitability.
“Yilport is very active in Europe and Latin America, continuously investing in ports, and we observe that ports in the United States are unfortunately 20 years behind in technology, compared to major ports in Europe or Asia,” he concluded.
This latest move follows the $379m acquisition of Tertir which added 10 terminals to Yilport’s global portfolio. Yilport is also investing $750m in the construction of a container port in Ecuador in five phases, each with a capacity of 500,000teu.
Source: Port Strategy
Source: Port Strategy