Balsu Gida Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S. is a producer, processor and exporter of hazelnuts and its derivatives. Its headquarters is located in Istanbul's

Beykoz Beykoz (), also known as Beicos and Beikos, is a district in Istanbul, Turkey at the northern end of the Bosphorus on the Anatolian side. The name is believed to be a combination of the words bey and ''kos'', which means "village" in Farsi. Beyk ...

district.

History

Its history dates back to 1979, when its founder

Cuneyd Zapsu Hasan Cuneyd Zapsu (born 19 November 1956 in İstanbul) is a Turkish businessman of Kurdish and Balkan origins. He was a co-founder of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey as well as the founder of Balsu, one of the world's leading ...

established a company which supplied

hazelnuts The hazelnut is the fruit of the hazel tree and therefore includes any of the nuts deriving from species of the genus ''Corylus'', especially the nuts of the species ''Corylus avellana''. They are also known as cobnuts or filberts according t ...

from

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...

to international markets. The modern company was founded in 1984 as a privately held business based in Istanbul. Balsu is reaching global markets through its affiliates: Balsu Europe GmbH in Germany, Balsu USA Inc in Florida, USA; and Balsu Asia in Hong-Kong.

Production

Today the company is one of the main hazelnut producers in Turkey, its factory in

Sakarya Sakarya may refer to: Places * Sakarya Province, in Turkey ** Sakarya (electoral district) ** Sakarya University * Sakarya (continent), a small continent 90 million years ago * Sakarya River, in Turkey * Sakarya, Polatlı, a village in Ankara Pr ...

is able to process about 55,000 tons of hazelnuts annually. It is also a leading exporter of hazelnuts to the global market and to its clients count companies like

Ritter Sport Ritter Sport is a brand of chocolate bar from the family-owned Alfred Ritter GmbH & Co. KG, which has its headquarters in Waldenbuch, Germany. Each square bar is divided into 16 smaller squares, creating a four-by-four pattern. In 2013 the co ...

Ferrero Ferrero (Italian: , Spanish: ) is a surname of Italian (from Piedmont) and Spanish origin that means 'smith', the person who works with iron, in parallel with surnames like Ferraro, Ferrari and Smith. Notable people with the surname Ferrero inclu ...

Nestlé Nestlé S.A. (; ; ) is a Switzerland, Swiss multinational food and drink processing conglomerate corporation headquartered in Vevey, Vaud, Switzerland. It is the largest publicly held food company in the world, measured by revenue and other me ...

. Balsu created together with Nestlé and

Olam International Olam International is a major food and agri-business company, operating in 60 countries and supplying food and industrial raw materials to over 20,900 customers worldwide. Its value chain includes farming, origination, processing and distributi ...

a program to enhance the labor standards in the hazelnut industry in Turkey.

References

Hazelnuts Turkish companies established in 1984 {{Turkey-company-stub