Gama Power, a Turkish company has plans to set its sights on Africa, Iran and the Far East. According to Özgür Umut Eroğlu, Gama Power Systems CEO, the company’s decision is concluded due to a slowdown of energy projects in Europe and problems with Russia as well as security concerns.
“We have set Ghana, Nigeria, the Ivory Coast, Senegal, Angola, Mozambique, Kenya and the South Africa as the target markets,” said Mr. Eroğlu. “We have been closely following the projects there, Some 10,000 MW of the 2015 projects were contracted in the Middle East and some 3,000 MW in Africa. We believe investments will rise in Africa. We established a company in Mozambique in this vein,” he added.
Mr. Eroğlu is also optimistic with the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam as appealing markets, in addition to Iran. The company’s engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) unit which focuses on energy projects, has so far undertaken about 8,000MW of power plant construction projects, half of which are in Turkey and the other half abroad.
In 2008, the total power capacity of the power plant projects, which had been inked in Africa, the Middle East, Europe, Russia, Turkey and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), were around 40,000 MW. However, the figured is said to have dropped to almost one-third of the 2008 levels in 2015 to around 16,000 MW.
Despite the global slowdown, the company has successfully managed to increase its market share from 4 to 12% during the slowdown period. Nonetheless, the company has presently become one of the top 10 EPC companies specializing in power plant development with about 10 contracts, which are estimated to be worth US$6bn.
Eroğlu noted that, the potential for new investment in Turkey has significantly dropped, although there are current licenses applications with more than 30,000 MW of capacity. New investments are being made in only a few Middle Eastern countries, such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia due to the huge potential in Egypt.
