The first railway connected industrial zone is planned to be built in Sivas.

Railway will be connected to each plant in 2nd Sivas Industrial Zone. Management expects to attract new railway industry investments to this region.

This zone has several advantages. Tudemsas, company of TCDD for building freight wagons, is in Sivas. TCDD requests local production in all big tenders.

Sivas has a critical location in railway logistics. The biggest mine of iron ore, the biggest load of railway, is 176 km away from Sivas. Sivas is on the route of traffic which will start after completion of Baku-Tbilisi-Kars project. Sivas is also on the crossing point of North-South and West-East railway corridors. There’s also a high speed train line construction to Sivas.

There are some other industrial zones with railway connection like Sincan, Manisa and Kemalpasa. However, 2nd Sivas Industrial Zone is being planned so that all plants will have direct railway connection. Being able to access to plants by railcars, new production investments for rolling stock can prefer this zone. Due to liberalization, high speed train sets tender with local production, national train/loco/wagon projects and incentives to railway investments, railway investments are expected to speed up in Turkey.

Direct connections by rail also means getting rid of trucking costs between terminal and sites. Thus, industrial zone is expecting new investors willing to use railway in transportation. Sidemir (Sivas Steel) which is one of the leading companies in Turkey is already located next to industrial zone. The areas to be given to investors are min 20k sqm which shows that the zone is willing to accept only huge investments.

Another advantage of the zone is being next to one of the logistic centers TCDD has planned to build.

Until now, 22 companies requested 1.5 mn sqm of area to invest. Some of them are told to be there for wagon production.

Also there are questions marks. This industrial zone is being discussed since last 20 years, but no construction started yet. First step is to publicise private area, which is expected to complete within this year.

Another problem is that Sivas could not attract new investors until now. Although the central industrial zone has no more areas for investors, most of the investments has not completed yet. Another industrial zone in region, Gemerek, could not be able to attract investors either.