Ülker to become international Pladis

Yıldız Holding CEO Murat Ülker said that the Godiva, DeMet's, United Biscuits and Ülker brands will be gathered under the new brand Pladis. At a meeting held at Yıldız Holding headquarters, Ülker provided information regarding the group's future and announced the decision to unite their newest brands - Godiva, DeMet's and United Biscuits - and Ülker under the same roof. He also said that they can secure their places in markets where they are the leader and afterward they can open in other markets around the world where there are various advantages. "We see this as a great opportunity," Ülker said.

Today, Yıldız Holding is active in 14 countries, has 77 plants, 300 brands and more than 1,000 sales points, and Ülker said that they have accomplished their dream of becoming a global brand. "Our family has grown considerably. We are a family of around 50,000 people. Further, our group will grow by 10 percent this year, but now we want to focus on our main job - biscuits, chocolates and sweets. We want to become globalized, so we need to reorganize our business. Our aim is to unite our power and combine our companies under one brand to become a leader in the sweet snacks market," Ülker said.

The company's structure has been renewed and reorganized, and they have separated regions of the world and distributed these regions among their CEOs. Yıldız Holding Food Group CEO Mehmet Tütüncü will be responsible for Turkey, the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia; Godiva CEO Mohamed Elsarky for America and Japan, and United Biscuit CEO Jeff van der Eeems for the U.K., Europe and Africa.

Executive Assistant Cem Karakaş said that the total turnover of the group was $12 billion in 2015 and $5.2 billion of this was obtained from the brands that will be under Pladis. Yıldız Gıda had an income of $8.2 billion last year, and the total number of employees at DeMet's, Godiva, United Biscuits and Ülker is around 26,000. "We plan to increase the turnover from 3.5 billion pounds [$4.99 billion] in 2015 to 5.5 billion pounds in 2018 with a 17 percent increase and earnings before interest, depreciation and tax from 343 million pounds to 900 million pounds with a 26 percent increase," Karakaş said.