Bitumen Bazaar reports - Turkish construction and bitumen supply company Guven Asfalt expects to start operations at a new 45,500t bitumen terminal at Ceyhan, southeast Turkey, in June.
The terminal, currently under construction on Toros Terminal’s Ceyhan site on the Mediterranean coast, will facilitate a much larger flow of cargoes into and out of Turkey.  Current imports into Ceyhan are operated on a ship-to-truck basis.
The new facility will allow Guven to compete with the country’s refiner and sole bitumen producer Tupras in export markets, and in supplying more of the road paving product to domestic construction sector end-users.
Trading firm BB Energy unit's 3B Trading already runs a bitumen terminal at Mersin, southern Turkey, handling size able cross-border volumes of trucked bitumen imported from Iraqi Kurdistan refineries. Exports of Mersin bitumen cargoes nearly trebled last year to 93,000t as up to 700,000t of Iraqi bitumen was trucked into Turkey. Most of the bitumen went into the Turkish road construction sector, through Guven.
These volumes compete directly with Tupras' domestic truck sales from its four bitumen-producing refineries. The Turkish refiner exported 735,000t of bitumen and vacuum residues last year from its Izmir and Izmit refinery terminals at Aliaga and Tutunciftlik, respectively. 
According to Argus, Guven plans to begin operating a new 10,000t inland bitumen terminal at Edirne, near Istanbul, in March. Local market participants expect Guven to use the terminal for truck exports into the Balkans and Romania.