Sector note · Machinery
Machines and automation
European equipment groups buy Turkish engineering teams that already build for export: lift controls, rail bogies, robotic lines.
Named deals
- 1Arkel Innovalift · 100%, signed July 2024, closed January 2025
- 2Duray Ulaşım Sistemleri Alstom · July 2024
- 3SC Otomasyon Troester · 2025
- 01
Turkish machinery exports reached a record USD 28.7bn in 2025, up 1.9%; Germany was the largest market at USD 3.2bn and the United States took nearly USD 2bn. The industry’s exporters’ association says more than half goes to Europe.
- 02
Export tonnage fell 6.3% in 2025 while the average export price reached a record USD 8.1 per kg: fewer machines by weight, worth more each.
- 03
Innovalift, the lift business of Sweden’s Latour, agreed in July 2024 to buy 100% of Arkel, an Istanbul maker of lift control systems with sales of about EUR 62m and about 410 staff. The Competition Board cleared it with commitments on supplying other Turkish lift makers, and it closed in January 2025.
Investment AB Latour, 19 July 2024 and 23 January 2025
ELIG Gürkaynak on Board decision 25-02/66-39 - 04
Alstom bought Duray Ulaşım Sistemleri in Bursa, a maker of bogies and car bodies, in July 2024, to make components for Alstom trains worldwide.
- 05
Troester, the Hanover maker of rubber and plastics machinery, bought the Istanbul robotics company SC Otomasyon in 2025; it now trades as Troester Robotics and builds robotic lines for tyre plants.
Orion view
These buyers pay for engineers and a product that already works in export markets, not for floor space. Show what the team has designed, which customers abroad run it and how much of the business is repeat orders. When the buyer also supplies your competitors or customers, expect the Competition Board to look closely, as it did with Arkel, and build that review into the timetable.
Sources: as cited above, read October 2026; Orion Capital Partners analysis.
Start with a conversation.
A first conversation is confidential and carries no obligation.