About 3,400 Direct and Indirect Jobs Expected in Türkiye's Food, Logistics and Farm Work as IFC Lends Doğuş Çay €100 Million

The International Finance Corporation is lending Doğuş Çay €100 million over eight years, and the investment is expected to support the creation of approximately 3,400 direct and indirect jobs in food processing, logistics and farming. That figure counts indirect as well as direct jobs, and it is not a count of posts that Doğuş Çay has advertised. The deal was unveiled in Istanbul on September 30, 2026, and it will fund more potato chip and tomato paste capacity, seed cultivation, storage and better distribution. For Metaintro readers in Türkiye, the useful questions are where the company makes chips and paste, what work its plants and fleet involve, and where it posts jobs. Here is what the primary pages show.

What Did IFC Agree to Lend Doğuş Çay?

The lender is the International Finance Corporation, the private sector arm of the World Bank Group. The borrower is Doğuş Çay ve Gıda Maddeleri Üretim Pazarlama İthalat İhracat A.Ş., which the IFC release calls a leading food and beverage producer. Doğuş Çay is Türkiye's largest private-sector tea producer, with 41 years of production experience across diverse categories including sugar, tomato paste, iced tea, lemonade and potato chips.

The deal is a long-term loan of €100 million with a maturity of eight years that includes a grace period of two years. It supports the company's multi-year investment program.

The money is earmarked for four things, listed in the IFC announcement:

• Expansion of chips and tomato paste production capacity.
• Investment in seed cultivation.
• Storage infrastructure.
• Improvements to distribution and logistics operations across Türkiye.

The financing will primarily support capacity expansion and efficiency investments at the potato chip production facilities, as well as tomato paste infrastructure, distribution capabilities and innovation initiatives, Doğuş Çay board member Bilge Kaan Karakan said.

For scale, IFC committed a record $71.7 billion to private companies and financial institutions in developing countries in fiscal year 2025, and it works in more than 100 countries.

Are the 3,400 Jobs Open Vacancies?

No. The investment is expected to support the creation of approximately 3,400 direct and indirect jobs, and those jobs are spread across food processing, logistics and farming. Neither the IFC release nor the Turkish trade magazine Food Turkey splits that figure between direct and indirect jobs.

Food Turkey's Turkish-language report keeps the same hedge, about 3,400 direct and indirect jobs (yaklaşık 3.400 doğrudan ve dolaylı istihdam), although a subheading on that page has the financing creating employment for 3,400 people in food, logistics and agriculture (translated).

So the figure is an expected number of direct and indirect jobs. It does not mean thousands of plant posts will appear on one date, and no hiring timeline is attached to it on the IFC release.

Where Does Doğuş Çay Make Its Chips, Tomato Paste and Tea?

The company runs 15 production facilities with a nationwide distribution network. Its own website names several of them by product.

• Potato chips. Doğuş Çay entered chips in 2013 and makes them at a factory in Pendik as well as a plant in the Aksaray organised industrial zone that the company calls one of Türkiye's most modern chips factories, and it has since built a third chips factory in Karacabey, Bursa.
• Tomato paste. Paste is made at the company's factory in Ödemiş, a district of İzmir that the company describes as having some of the most productive tomato land, a line the company started in 2008. The Ödemiş paste and canning factory sits on 70 thousand m2 of land with 7 thousand 500 m2 of indoor space. The Ödemiş site also turns out chips in cans.
• Tea. Tea comes from five tea processing plants in Rize and one packaging plant in Ordu, with an annual production capacity of 50 thousand tonnes.
• Sugar. The company entered sugar in 1994 and took over the Afyon sugar factory in 2018, one of the Turkish sugar plants with the highest quota.
• Iced tea and lemonade. These are made at a production facility in İzmir that the company opened after a 35 million lira investment in 2015.

Its chips brands are Patos, Cipso, Çerezos and Chips Master. Doğuş Çay entered chips through its 2013 acquisition of Kraft Gıda.

The Aksaray plant has a public record too. During a visit by the provincial governor, reported on the Aksaray governorship's website on May 6, 2016, the company's chips factories director said the Aksaray chips factories had 460 employees and that the company wanted to increase that number. The governor toured the potato and corn chips production and packaging stages. That headcount is a decade old and is not a current figure.

None of the primary pages names which plant will get the new chips and paste capacity.

We plan to commence operations at our potato chip production facility in Hungary in 2027, further extending our growth journey into Europe, Doğuş Çay board member Bilge Kaan Karakan said, according to the IFC press release.

What Did the Last New Chips Plant Mean for Jobs?

The third chips plant is in Karacabey, Bursa. Doğuş Çay invested $40 million in that third chips factory, which makes extruded, potato and tortilla chips. The details in this section come from a company press release carried on September 14, 2025.

That factory employs about 351 people, half of them women, and it lifted the company's total employment in chips to about 1,700 people. With the new plant, chips output capacity across the three factories rose by about 45 percent, and by 62 percent once chips in cans made in Ödemiş are counted.

The new factory was a response to strong interest in all the chips brands, especially Cipso, from young people, board member Harika Karakan Batallı said, and she pointed to a significant market share in the Balkans with its Patos and Cipso brands and strong export demand from European countries.

Those figures come from the September 2025 press release on the Karacabey plant, not this loan. They show how many direct jobs one chips factory carried, and they are not a forecast.

What Kind of Work Sits Behind Food Processing and Logistics Here?

The company develops automation and robot focused projects at all three chips plants, and the company uses smart warehouse applications in shipping.

At the chips plants, product collection at the packaging machine exit, boxing, palletising and moving goods to the shipping rack are planned as software and automation controlled steps and done without hand contact. The company also uses AI supported occupational health and safety checks on the floor.

The company's fleet had five women truck drivers in its September 2025 press release. The new loan will fund improvements to distribution and logistics operations across Türkiye.

The chips plants use potatoes, corn and semolina, and the potatoes and corn are bought from farmers each year.

What Does the Deal Offer the More Than 50,000 Farmers Who Supply Doğuş Çay?

Doğuş Çay works with more than 50,000 farmers across the country and sources key farm products, including potatoes, tea, sugar beet, corn, and tomatoes. The investment is expected to create income opportunities for more than 50,000 farmers.

The company uses contract farming arrangements, through which farmers gain market access, technical support, quality input, and more predictable income opportunities. The investment is expected to strengthen these linkages and help meet the company's growing sourcing needs as production expands.

The chips side uses special seed varieties that help farmers build experience in good agricultural practice, Batallı said, adding that the company keeps farmland from lying idle and supports sustainable farming. The new loan will fund investments in seed cultivation and storage infrastructure. On tea, the company runs a 10-year tea farming project with TEMA Foundation.

Türkiye’s food and beverage sector is a major source of jobs and income for thousands of farmers and businesses across the country, IFC regional industry director Wagner Albuquerque de Almeida said, according to the IFC announcement page.

Which Jobs Does Doğuş Çay List on Its Jobs Profile?

On Doğuş Çay's current profile on the Kariyer.net job board, the three listings shown are a graphic design specialist, an accounting clerk and an assistant product manager, all on site, full time and in the Asian side of Istanbul, and none is a plant or driver role. On that profile, Doğuş Çay is listed in the food and fast moving consumer goods sector with 4000 to 4999 employees, with its address in Istanbul.

How Do You Register With İŞKUR?

İŞKUR, the Turkish Employment Agency, matches registered job seekers with open jobs. To use its services you must register, either online through the agency portal or in person at an İŞKUR unit.

Key registration rules on the İŞKUR registration page:

• You must be at least 14 years old to register.
• Registration is based on your own declaration, and your personal, contact, education, occupation and other details must be complete and accurate.
• Your record is not activated until you enter your education and occupation details in your CV.
• A registration stays active for twelve months from your last transaction, and you can reactivate it through the portal or by contacting an İŞKUR provincial office or service centre in person, by phone, fax or email.
• People registering online as disabled must have their health board report approved at an İŞKUR provincial office or service centre, or they are processed with normal status.
• People registering online as former convicts must also have their documents approved at an İŞKUR provincial office or service centre, or they are processed with normal status.
• People with priority rights to apply for worker requests from public institutions must present their priority documents at an İŞKUR provincial office or service centre for approval.
• A record that has gone passive is not treated as active until the job seeker updates it.

İŞKUR also runs vocational training courses and on-the-job training programmes. The same job seeker section covers unemployment insurance, unemployment benefit and the İŞKUR Youth Programme, along with job and career counselling and job clubs.

How Does This Fit Türkiye's Job Market?

In August 2026, Türkiye's unemployment rate fell by 0.3 points to 7.8 percent, based on TÜİK figures published in the Gazete Oksijen newspaper. The employment rate rose 0.1 points to 48.4 percent, and labour force participation held at 52.5 percent. The number of unemployed people aged 15 and over fell by 106 thousand from the previous month to 2 million 740 thousand, while the number employed rose by 136 thousand to 32 million 507 thousand.

Unemployment among men was 6.6 percent in August, while among women it was 10.1 percent, and in the 15-24 age group it fell 1.1 points to 13.0 percent. Within that age group, unemployment was 9.7 percent for young men and 19.4 percent for young women. The employment rate for women was 31.5 percent, and their labour force participation rate was 35.0 percent. Average actual weekly working hours rose 0.5 hours to 42.5 hours in August, adjusted for seasonal and calendar effects. The broader idle labour rate, which adds the time-related underemployed and the potential labour force to the unemployed, rose to 31.0 percent.

IFC's financing supports the World Bank Group's broader priorities in Türkiye, which include private sector growth, job creation, and more competitive agricultural value chains.

What This Means for Job Seekers, and What Should You Do Next?

No hiring timeline is attached to the figure on the IFC release. The loan runs over eight years with two years of grace, the jobs figure mixes direct and indirect jobs, and no primary page names a plant for the new capacity.

If you work in or near food production, the Bursa plant shows what one chips factory involves. It shares in the company's automation and robot focused projects and employed about 351 people in the September 2025 press release. If you are preparing for factory work, you can read about skills for your manufacturing resume and how to get machinist certification.

Here is what we would do:

• Know where chips and paste are made. Pendik and Aksaray make chips, Karacabey makes chips too, and Ödemiş makes paste.
• Keep your İŞKUR record live. Registration lapses after twelve months without activity, and it is not active until your education and occupation details are in.
• Drivers and warehouse staff, lead with licences and systems. The company's September 2025 release listed women truck drivers in its fleet and smart warehouse tools, so list licence classes and any warehouse software you know.
• Farmers, look at contract farming. Contract farming brings market access, technical support, quality input and more predictable income, and the chips plants buy potatoes and corn from farmers each year.

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People Also Asked

Q: How many jobs will the IFC loan to Doğuş Çay create?

A: The investment is expected to support approximately 3,400 direct and indirect jobs in food processing, logistics and farming, which is a projection and not a count of open vacancies.

Q: Where are Doğuş Çay's chips and tomato paste factories?

A: Chips are made in Pendik and in the Aksaray organised industrial zone, with a third chips plant in Karacabey, Bursa, and tomato paste is made at the company's factory in Ödemiş, İzmir.

Q: Has a plant been named for the new chips and paste capacity?

A: No. The IFC release lists the expansion of chips and tomato paste production capacity without naming a plant, and separately, job seekers in Türkiye can register with İŞKUR online or in person to be matched with open jobs.

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