Uzel Holding (also known as Uzel Group and Uzel Corporation) was one of Turkey's oldest and largest manufacturing companies. Its main sector was agricultural machinery, although it eventually branched out into the automotive industry and real estate through its venture capital arm, Argentum. The company was founded in 1937. However, its roots went back to the middle of the nineteenth century. Uzel Holding collapsed in 2010 and was declared bankrupt in July 2012.
History
The roots of Uzel Group reach back to 1864 when the Uzel family began making and selling phaetons in the city of Rousse in Bulgaria, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire. Ibrahim Uzel, became the founder and the first Chairman of the Uzel Group in 1937 when he set up a sole proprietorship in Bursa, a city in northwestern Turkey and began making leaf springs for motor vehicles. In 1961, production of the company's first agricultural tractors began. The Company built its first diesel engine in 1964.
In 1997, 15% of the shares of a subsidiary of the Group, Uzel Makina, were listed both in Istanbul and London Stock Exchanges in an IPO coordinated by Morgan Stanley. In 2005, Uzel relocated its headquarters to Amsterdam in the Netherlands and acquired Gebrüder Holder GmbH, one of Europe's oldest tractor makers.