Topic 1: The way towards sustainable and resilient food systems
As Konya Seker, we would like to conduct all three topics, and to develop innovative solutions that address global challenges in food security, sustainability, and resilience. Our expectations are the integration of cutting-edge technologies, community-driven practices, and environmentally responsible approaches to transform food systems. By collaborating, we aim to co-create pathways to a more equitable, sustainable, and resilient future.
Konya Seker is a large enterprise known as the 'Producing Power of Turkey' and started production in 1954. The major stakeholder of the company is the Konya Beet Growers Cooperative, which has 46 thousand producers as partners. Konya Seker, which only produced crystal sugar until the 2000s, expanded its fields of activity by creating an investment plan and determined its vision as "to provide an industrial structure that will process every product that is or can be produced, find solutions to the problems experienced in this process, and strengthen the competitive structure of the agricultural sector." Konya Seker, which established total of 45 production facilities, some of which are on global scale, with the investments it made by using its own resources effectively, became the company that developed the sector range in which it operates the fastest. Within this framework, in the last 14 years, it has expanded its production line to a wide range from crystal sugar to sweet sherbet, from medicine sugar to confectionery and chocolate, from snacks to meat and dairy products, from frozen products to sunflower oil, from organic fertilizer to animal husbandry, from bioethanol to electricity generation. Offering its frozen products to the market under the Torku Pratiko brand, Konya Seker also brings snacks, meat and dairy products together with consumers under the Torku brand. Torku established "Dogrudan Market" retail stores in order to offer its delicious products, which it developed in the most natural form and with all its rich variety, to its consumers and farmer partners in order to deliver natural and healthy products to the end consumer on the one hand, and to create a demand guarantee for the producer's harvest and to increase their welfare with value-added products on the other. Konya Seker, which realizes approximately 22% of Turkey's total beet sugar production, is also the market leader in the frozen potato market. 194,565,730.08 ₺ of the 1,276,502,241.36 ₺ profit obtained from production activities is earned from export activities.
Furthermore, Konya Seker, which has accelerated its R&D activities since the 2000s, established its R&D laboratories in 2011. In 2016, it put the R&D Center, approved by the Ministry of Technology and Industry, into operation. In this context, studies continue in the sugar, snack, agriculture and bioethanol activity lines at the R&D Center.