MANAŞ

MAN Türkiye A.Ş.

Type	Public company
Industry	Automotive, Manufacturing
Predecessor	MAN Kamyon ve Otobüs Sanayi A.Ş.
Founded	1966
Headquarters	Ankara, Turkey
Number of locations	manufacturing facilities in Ankara
Key people	Orhan Düzgün, head of the Managing board of MAN Türkiye A.Ş
Products	Commercial vehicles, Diesel engines
Services	Industrial services
Revenue	€ 414 million (2005)
Number of employees	2,700 (2005)
Parent	MAN SE
Website	MAN.com.tr

MAN Türkiye A.Ş., abbreviated to MANAŞ, is a joint company formerly known as MAN Kamyon ve Otobüs Sanayi A.Ş., founded in early 1966 in Turkey as a result of cooperation between a German company, MAN AG, and a Turkish company, Ercanlar A.Ş., to jointly manufacture heavy motor vehicles for Turkey.

Initially, motor vehicles manufactured in Germany were sold by Ercanlar A.Ş. (a private Turkish company) in Turkey. This arrangement gained MAN an overall market share of 20 per cent as early as in the 1950s. But in 1962 Turkish import regulations changed.

First, Ercanlar A.Ş. obtained special import permits, which enabled the continued import of MAN trucks to Turkey. However, this special regulation was granted only for a limited period of time. The only avenue left open for MAN was to supply the Turkish commercial vehicle market by delivering parts from Germany for assembly in Turkey - in the form of complete knock down (CKD) kits. Consequently, MAN and Ercanlar founded the joint company MAN Kamyon ve Otobüs Sanayi A.Ş. (abbreviated MANAŞ) in early 1966, MAN holding a third of the shares in this new company. A modern truck production plant was built outside the gates of Istanbul. This was a first in MAN AG history to have a plant outside of Germany. Completed after barely a year, it was opened and commenced production on 25 May 1967. Assembly work started on the opening day, and only four days later, on 29 May, the first MAN vehicle, a 520 H unit, rolled off the assembly line.

1997 the output was increased to four buses per day at the same time Ercanlar AS ran into financial troubles and MAN Nutzfahrzeuge AG increased its share in MANAŞ to 81 per cent. After the share increase MANAŞ was renamed to MAN Türkiye A.Ş.

Thanks to the project "Evolution 2004", the plant finally reached today's production capacity of 2000 buses/coaches per year. This means that every 100 minutes, a bus or coach rolls off the assembly line at MAN Türkiye. By achieving this latest milestone in its history, MAN Türkiye today is the bus/coach centre for all MAN and NEOPLAN intercity buses and standard touring coaches, as well as for MAN high-floor city buses, serving customers in more than forty countries, according to the quality mark "Made by NEOMAN" via the common NEOMAN sales organisation and the newly founded MAN Türkiye sales organisation.