Çorum's digital commerce potential
Çorum is one of Anatolia's exporting industrial cities, known as an 'Anatolian Tiger' thanks to its long-established manufacturing families. Its most striking strength lies in a field few would expect: milling and flour plant machinery. Companies from Çorum install turnkey flour, semolina and feed plants in more than a hundred countries.
That is a strategic difference: Çorum does not mill the grain itself — it exports the machine and the plant that mills it. Leading manufacturers in the sector, in Türkiye and worldwide, are based in this city, which gives Çorum a high-value, engineering-led export identity.
The second strong branch is brick and roof tile: built on rich clay deposits, this cluster makes Çorum the leader in Türkiye. The city's earth is exported as tile and brick from Romania to Bulgaria and from Georgia to Israel — that is, the earth gains value as a processed building material rather than as a raw one.
In food, the emblem of the city is leblebi: geographically indicated Çorum leblebi is exported from China to Germany and from the Netherlands to Morocco. Pasta and other food products complete this production culture, and leblebi is an asset well suited to branding and e-commerce.
The city's export performance is strong: its recent monthly export figures place it high in the national ranking and first in its region. With a world heritage site such as Hattusa, the Hittite capital, it also holds cultural tourism potential.
Çorum's production and appetite for export are strong; what is usually missing is digital visibility and international digital marketing. A multilingual B2B showcase and reference-led content for machinery and building materials companies, and branding and e-commerce for products such as leblebi, can take this strong production base into wider markets.