A group of Turkish business associations is looking to buy the household appliances operations of Dutch health care equipment maker Philips, Turkish newspaper Sabah reported Friday.

Philips said in January it was looking to separate the household appliances arm, which makes vacuum cleaners and coffee machines and had $2.6 billion in sales in 2019.

Spokesman Steve Klink said the company is still in the process of disentangling the operations, a process expected to take 12-18 months.

"We would only expect to engage... (with potential buyers) after the summer," he said.

The Turkish group includes five leading organizations in the business world: The Foreign Economic Relations Board (DEİK), exporters’ assembly TİM, the chambers and commodity exchanges union (TOBB) and business associations TUSİAD and MUSİAD.

"We as Turkey are the most powerful country in production between Germany and China. Hence an economic model must be created by the Turkish business world forming consortiums and buying global brands," said DEİK board member Murat Kolbaşı.

Turkey has a $1 billion small household appliances market while there are 10,300 small household appliances brands in the world market which are worth $100 billion.

Kolbaşı said that among those, Philips’s home appliances arm is the largest with a 2.3 billion euro ($2.5 billion) turnover.

Trade Minister Ruhsar Pekcan had expressed support for the project, as well.