Baykar’s chief executive Haluk Bayraktar first announced the news of a TB2 plant in October 2022, after having donated and delivered combat drones valued at millions of dollars to Ukrainian forces since the beginning of the war in February of that year.
He told Defense News that the construction work on Baykar’s local subsidiary, LLC Avia Ventures, is moving as planned towards an opening date sometime in 2025.
“LLC Avia Ventures was first registered in Kyiv in 2019 and received earlier last year a license for the import-export of military products. It is one of the first and only companies so far in the country to have a foreign founder as part of its structure and a license for defense systems,” Bayraktar said.
“Much of the preparatory work is already being performed, with the site expected to already receive electricity come July,” he added.
The project was spurred through the signing of a framework of agreement in February 2022 between the governments of Ukraine and Turkey to cooperate in the aerospace industry. Defense News was given exclusive access to the document, whose purpose is to promote direct investments in the relevant field and create favorable conditions for technology transfer and use of production. It provides, in part, special tax and custom incentives for Turkish investors in the aerospace sector of Ukraine until January 2035.
Through its local entity, Baykar is further investing in Ukraine by building a center of excellence in UAS technologies, which involves a transfer of technology to localize the production of the company’s drones.
“We have received the appropriate license permits from Turkey to fully produce both Baykar’s TB2 and Akinci drones in Ukraine,”
Baykar said. The planned total investment for the construction of these facilities is $95,5 million.
Photo: An artist’s rendering of Turkish drone maker Baykar’s envisioned production facility in Ukraine. (Baykar image)
Source: Defense News