Mike O’Driscoll, Alexandra Feytis
While Turkey’s Eti Soda AS is to commence work on expanding natural soda ash production capacity at Beypazari, 80km north-west of Ankara, its majority partner, Ciner Group has started a major development at the nearby Kazan trona deposit, having recently acquired the reserves from Rio Tinto Plc.
Sinan Solaklar, sales and marketing director for Eti Soda, told IM: “We shall become a crucial player in the soda ash market once our projects are finished.”
Eti Soda is expected to start work this month on expanding its soda ash plant capacity from the existing 1m. tpa capacity, to 1.7m. tpa dense soda ash, in addition to 100,000 tpa sodium bicarbonate.
The Beypazari expansion is scheduled to be operational in 2013.
In 2010, its...