Turkey's Limak Eyes Sub-Saharan JVs

Limak Enerji, a Turkish energy company, is looking for joint venture partners in Sub-Saharan Africa, CEO Birol Erguven has said.

"We'll set up joint ventures in at least in two of those countries this year and each investment will range between $50mn and $200mn, in which we seek to hold the majority," he said.

The company's primary objective in Sub-Saharan Africa is to become an integrated energy company which will be active in electricity production, distribution as well as energy trade.

Limak Cimento, the cement arm of parent company, Limak Group, recently invested in Cote d'Ivoire and Mozambique via joint ventures.

In Europe, Limak has also been operating electric power transmission lines between Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece, and has plans to create an extended and integrated system. Specifically, it exports and imports electricity between Bulgaria and Turkey, as it did with Greece and Turkey in 2014. "We are also doing the same between all Balkan countries that we involved in," he said.

Limak Enerji is a newly-emerging group of companies that has investments in electricity generation, distribution, sales and trading. Owned by Limak Group, a Turkish conglomerate has energy investments in Turkey, Bulgaria, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Romania.

It is a joint venture partner of Turkish electricity distribution companies BEDAS, Uludag Energy, Akdeniz Energy and Camlibel Energy. The four companies have a total of 9.5mn customers and an annual 45bn kWh capacity. BEDAS is providing electricity to 4.3mn homes on the European side of Istanbul.

Limak Enerji operates Turkey’s largest natural gas combined cycle power plant Hamitabat with a 1,200MW capacity, while it also owns seven hydroelectric power plants with total capacity of 731 MW.

Limak Group posted a turnover of $3.8bn in 2015, up by 26.6% compared to 2014. Limak Enerji has generated approximately 40% of this turnover.

Murat Basboga