- Business
- Merko Gıda Sanayi ve Ticaret A.Ş. is a Turkey-based agribusiness and food processing company primarily engaged in the industrial manufacturing, processing, packaging, and international trade of tomato products and preserved agricultural commodities. The company operates through integrated processing and contract farming operations, supplying food manufacturers, quick-service restaurant chains, retail private labels, and food service operators across global markets.
The company's product portfolio is organized into tomato-based products and processed fruit and vegetable offerings, comprising industrial tomato paste in diverse brix concentrations and aseptic bag-in-box and drum packaging; aseptic diced tomatoes; canned whole peeled tomatoes; crushed and chopped canned tomatoes; tomato puree and passata; concentrated tomato juice; and individually quick frozen (IQF) fruits and vegetables, including green peas, peppers, broccoli, spinach, sweet corn, strawberries, cherries, and plums. Merko Gıda also provides contract agriculture coordination, specialized private-label packing, cold chain storage, and customized ingredient formulations tailored for global food manufacturing applications.
Headquartered in Istanbul, Turkey, with core manufacturing and canning operations situated in its consolidated processing complex in Tepecik (Mustafakemalpaşa, Bursa), the company also maintains regional facilities and storage assets across Yalova and Karamürsel. Merko Gıda serves both the domestic Turkish food industry and international export destinations throughout Europe, North America, the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific region, including Germany, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, the United States, and Japan.
Founded in 1982 and publicly traded on Borsa Istanbul under the ticker MERKO, the company operates under the ownership and strategic backing of AG Girişim Holding A.Ş. In recent developments, Merko Gıda has executed strategic portfolio adjustments and operational modernizations to optimize its core processing assets. The company completed a phased reduction of its equity interest in preserved food manufacturer Frigo-Pak Gıda Maddeleri Sanayi ve Ticaret A.Ş. to redeploy capital into high-margin product capabilities and capacity enhancements at its primary Tepecik plant, notably expanding diced and peeled tomato processing lines and integrating advanced freeze-dry technologies. In parallel, controlling shareholder AG Girişim Holding A.Ş. augmented its equity stake through open-market share acquisitions on Borsa Istanbul, reinforcing the group's capitalization. Furthermore, Merko Gıda strengthened its international market footprint through new distribution partnerships focused on Asian markets, particularly Japan, while bolstering its corporate equity structure through a bonus share capital increase.