Concordat in Akhisar: a one-year moratorium for Baktat Zeytin

Bursa's 3rd Commercial Court of First Instance has granted a one-year definitive moratorium (kesin mühlet) to Baktat Zeytin Sanayi Ticaret A.Ş., a table-olive processor in Akhisar, Manisa. The ruling was announced on 25 August 2026 and takes effect from 21 August 2026.

This does not mean the company has closed. Below is what it does mean, and why it is worth following for the olive sector.

The timeline

The court ended the appointments of the provisional commissioners and named three people to oversee the process: the lawyer Hakan Yıldız and the certified accountants Engin Dinçeli and Birol Aslan. Their monthly fees are to be met from the company's assets. Measures imposed during the provisional period continue to apply.

What a definitive moratorium means

Concordat is a legal route allowing a company that cannot meet its debts to restructure them without going bankrupt. It has two stages:

• Provisional moratorium: short-term protection while the court examines the situation.
• Definitive moratorium: longer protection granted if the court decides the process should continue. Enforcement proceedings against the company are suspended while it keeps trading and works on restructuring.

A definitive moratorium is therefore not a bankruptcy ruling but time granted in order to avoid one. If creditors accept the concordat plan and the court ratifies it, the company continues; if not, bankruptcy may follow.

Why Akhisar

Akhisar is one of the centres of Turkey's table-olive industry. The district holds four separate geographical indication registrations: Akhisar Domat table olive, Akhisar Domat olive oil, Akhisar Uslu table olive and Akhisar Uslu olive oil.

That concentration also means the processing capacity in the district is where growers sell. In table olives the link between grower and consumer is usually a processing and packing plant of exactly this kind; we examined those links one by one in from tree to shelf.

Why it matters for the sector

Table olives are more labour-intensive than oil and involve more processing stages: brining, sizing, sorting, packing. Those stages require capital and stock-holding — the harvest happens in one season while sales are spread across the year.

That structure squeezes processors from both sides: raw material to be paid for at harvest, receivables collected over the following months. We looked at this cost structure in informality in the table olive sector and what does a kilo of olives cost to produce.

For that reason one company's concordat is not only that company's affair: who growers in the district can sell to, when they are paid, and how competition is shaped all follow from it.

What comes next

The definitive moratorium runs for a year. During it the commissioners monitor the company's finances, a concordat plan is drawn up and put to creditors. The process may be extended or end early.

Concordat rulings are published in the Turkish Trade Registry Gazette, where anyone following the case can verify them.