Welcome to F&L, where senior freight logistics leaders & their teams leverage F&L’s neutrality & confidential peer exchange across the international multi-stakeholder community to shape their own global strategies and implement a more effective response to market changes.
Why attend? For international leaders, meeting face-to-face with peers in Türkiye is an essential step to better understand Türkiye’s critical influence and support across the supply chain, to determine implications for own plans and to identify strategic opportunities. For Türkiye-based leaders: meet peer group, outline domestic strategies, understand key priorities of international community. All: network, better understand areas of mutual benefit and collaboration, stronger & new commercial partnerships. You will only be able to enter with an advance ticket.
Meeting date & location. 24-25 September 2026, Istanbul, Türkiye.
What to expect. On 24 Sept – leaders’ round-table discussion agenda including cross-sector, expert & external viewpoints, community-led including but not limited to F&L Members, no sales pitches. See “Why is F&L different?” On 25 Sept – multiple industry visits on both the European and Asian sides. See “Agenda” & “Take Home”.
Costs. €450 card at registration / €500 payment by invoice + relevant VAT. These discounted rates apply to F&L members: non-member companies pay €2,000 + VAT. A small number of leaders will be invited by F&L’s partners in Türkiye. F&L is a neutral (independent), non-for-profit and non lobby members’ forum using knowledge, skills and collaborative opportunities across the freight logistics sector to drive improved standards, learnings & the success of Members of the community.
Help? Get in touch.
In association with (further to be confirmed)
Partners (further to be confirmed)
Türkiye - customer, supplier, critical partner in a changing landscape
A closed-door, high-level strategic commercial dialogue across industry sectors & transport modes
in-person | Chatham House Rule | no recording | no media | no online participation | no sales pitches
24 September (Thursday)
The meeting will be held in English only. All participants will meet everyone present. Leaders’ round-table discussion agenda including cross-sector, expert & external viewpoints, community-led, no sales pitches from the platform.
09:30 – 17:30, Istanbul
Hosted by Yapı ve Kredi Bankası Genel Müdürlük – Levent [European side]
Outline Agenda (currently being shaped around the interests of those attending)
Welcome and changing the conversation: in a protected environment, discussion will be led by cargo owners, key players & experts in their fields.
Briefings – understanding change in international trade flows from the crossroads of the continents:
- Economics & expectations – Türkiye’s central position in changing trade flows with new routes / hubs / infrastructure / customer demands / partnerships reshaping the flow of goods between Europe, Asia, Middle East, Africa, developments in Middle Corridor & Indo Med Corridor, also a key role in energy supply
- Türkiye as a customer: a growing & strategically vital market with numerous opportunities
- Türkiye as a supplier: near sourcing, who, why & what next
Interactive discussions & workshops – “opening the gate wider” to improve flows & strategies to improve our own value-add including, but not limited to –
- Reducing transit times & costs, capacity, compliance and customs, congestion, uncomfortable dependencies
- M&A impact
- Digital, tech, AI – quick fix?
- Examining today’s trade-offs, blind spots, what experience tells us to change or continue as we are? How, and with whose help?
- Much more, which will be added to the agenda as participants confirm their attendance
Evening networking dinner programme for all participants
25 September (Friday)
09:00 – 15:30, Istanbul
Choice of industry visits on both the European and the Asian sides to examine innovation, advanced infrastructure, evolving best practices & understand how operations work behind the scenes
- New Railport intermodal logistics solution offering ever-shorter transit times between markets and new infrastructure at the crossroads of the continents.
- Istanbul airport is a significant global air cargo hub for Europe, Asia, Africa & the Middle East. A visit around Turkish Cargo’s SmartIst to be confirmed.
- Also to be confirmed, we are looking at visit possibilities for the high-tech smart gateway for Türkiye’s Marmara corridor (end to end connections from the industrial heart to global markets), key hub operations, sophisticated last-mile delivery infrastructure and micro-fulfilment centres enabling remarkable e-commerce growth, understanding transit vessel traffic through the Straits of Istanbul, intelligent intralogistics/warehouse automation.
Türkiye - customer, supplier, critical partner in a changing landscape
Legal:
Data subjects’ explicit GDPR consent: The data subject hereby explicitly consents to submit his/her personal data to F&L and to F&L’s processing thereof in accordance with the F&L general privacy policy that is available on the F&L website (https://www.europeanfreightleaders.eu/privacy/). The data subject explicitly consents to occasional silent photographs / filming during F&L events/meetings and to the consequent processing of his/her personal data by F&L in accordance with the provisions of the said general privacy policy. The data subject hereby also confirms that he/she has read, fully understood and entirely approves F&L’s general privacy policy without making any reservations.
F&L events are in principle governed by a tailored “Chatham House Rule”. That Chatham House Rule helps to create a trusted environment to understand and resolve complex matters. When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the tailored Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s) in relation to his/her particular content may be revealed externally. Speaker presentations /materials can however be shared with F&L members and participants to the F&L event but should not be shared externally without the consent of the speaker or without his/her anonymization.
Türkiye - customer, supplier, critical partner in a changing landscape
This meeting is for senior business leaders & their teams; people who are actively leading industry today.
100 – 150 leaders based internationally will attend including F&L Member companies and leaders across Türkiye. Confirmed senior leaders already attending include P&G, JLR, Cranfield University, Loder Logistics Association, Utikad, The British Chamber of Commerce in Turkey, Duisport, Railport, Port Boulogne Calais, EP Logistics International, HIPP & we are in conversation with many others. Participants will be added in due course and, in the meantime, you can see who attended recent F&L meetings below.
Participant list for “Priorities & Choices: stuck in Crisis Mode?” (Apr 2026)
Participant list for F&L at Nike (Oct 2025)
Participant list for Poland (Apr 2025)
Participant list for Zaragoza Spain (Oct 2024)
A different goal...
… F&L was created in 1994 by shippers & logistics providers who realised that they could not tackle logistics issues alone in their companies, or within a commercial structure. They created a neutral, independent not-for-profit platform for senior logistics leaders and their teams to utilise cross-industry peer exchange to – judge today’s trade-offs – identify new opportunities for resilience and growth – catch blind spots – de-risk decision making – and determine facts, helping everyone build on real world experience to develop more practical, durable solutions and choose their own paths forward, together and separately.
F&L’s mission – to drive improved standards, learnings & the success of Members by leveraging the multi-stakeholder international community to spark knowledge sharing & tackle obstacles from every possible vantage point.
How is this achieved? F&L is structured as a neutral (independent), not-for-profit, confidential, antitrust compliant Members’ forum and is registered in Belgium as a professional ASBL. Multi-stakeholder membership is deliberately balanced to ensure a variety of perspectives across a host of variables. F&L does not lobby but it does have strong relationships with policymakers and many other institutions and communities for its Members’ benefit.
Members are global / regional heads of logistics & supply chain, CEOs & senior management focused on freight logistics across the supply chain, asset owners, founders of critical solutions, all industry sectors and transport modes, based across Europe & globally (list). Unlimited licences are provided for leaders to share the membership with colleagues (no charge).
“The important thing is to avoid the ‘narrow’ trap & the echo chamber”
“Access to informed external views & sheer breadth which it is not possible to organise by yourself”
“Where else can you ask questions openly and listen to others doing the same?”
“Learn, benchmark & challenge”
“We make better, more informed, more robust decisions”
Railport is a brand new Intermodal Logistics Terminal built in the east-west trade corridor with the partnership of Arkas, one of the leading Turkish international holding companies, operating with a total of 67 companies in Türkiye and abroad, and duisport, the largest intermodal logistics terminal operator in Europe. Once finished, the terminal will be providing services in a total area of 265 thousand square meters. Linking the countries in Asia and the EU through the Iron Silk Road (the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway) and the European Railway respectively, Railport’s location was selected to function as a bridge for transportation not only between the countries in Asia and Europe, but also between those in Europe, Balkan and Central Asia (CIS). The new Intermodal Logistics Terminal will integrate Türkiye and Europe with the route from China to Central Asia, which extends to the Middle East, Russia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Georgia through the Trans-Asian Railway Network within the scope of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
The Port of Boulogne Calais sits at the heart of major European maritime, road and rail traffic flows. Anchored on the English Channel coastline, Calais is a European leader in roll-on/roll-off (Ro-Ro) freight and Boulogne-sur-Mer is France’s leading fishing port and Europe’s foremost seafood hub. With DFDS, the port has a new rail freight connection between Sète and Calais offer customers transit times of seven days for freight between Türkiye and the UK.
UTİKAD was founded in 1986 and, as the Turkish Forwarding and Logistics Association, is the most extensive non-governmental organisation of the Turkish transportation and logistics industry. Members offer land, air, sea, rail, and combined transportation as well as warehousing services, fast cargo and package transportation services, customs brokerage and logistics services in Türkiye and abroad. UTİKAD acts as the voice of the Turkish logistics industry and represents the industry and its members on several platforms at home and abroad. Aside from its efforts aimed at achieving international standards and contributing to sustainable development of the industry and its members, UTIKAD conducts training activities for the fostering and development of a logistics culture in Türkiye as well.
The British Chamber of Commerce in Türkiye is one of Türkiye’s oldest non-profit business organisations and was established in 1887 with a mission to contribute to international trade and investment by bridging businesses in Türkiye with counterparts in the United Kingdom and beyond. Its community, along with BCCT’s team and high profile Board Members provide BCCT with the ability to reach a great number of businesses, while the broad array of skill sets they represent translate into a robust capacity to deliver insightful, practical, value-added business support services that include business development, market intelligence, event management, and PR support.
Yapı Kredi has been sustainably strengthening its market positioning in the sector since its establishment in 1944 through a customer-centric approach and focus on innovation. Yapı Kredi achieved total assets worth TL 3.8 trillion as of the first three months of 2026. Constantly seeking to increase its contribution to the financing of the Turkish economy with its customer-centric approach, Yapı Kredi enlarged the volume of its total cash and non-cash loans by 40% y-o-y in first quarter of 2026 to TL 2.8 trillion.
Türkiye - customer, supplier, critical partner in a changing landscape
“Take Home” deliverables for those attending the Meeting:
- Open peer exchange in a protected environment
- Interactive agenda on key focus areas that matter to participants without commercial sales pitches
- Close the “knowledge gap” about what is happening elsewhere & what is coming next
- Commercial priorities & actions – utilising peer experience and “one key message” to plan to prosper regardless of external challenges
- Building on discussion from F&L April 26 & online insights
- Choices of behind the scenes visits.
High level overview
- Wed 23 Sept – 19:30 welcome dinner (tbc)
- Thurs 24 Sept – F&L agenda 09:30 – 17:30 + evening dinner programme
- Fri 25 Sept – Choice of industry visits on both the European and Asian side & continued networking
Dress Code & Questions
- General businesswear and any F&L members‘ products!
- Questions welcome – please get in touch.
Discounted sleeping hotel
Discount at a good hotel very close to discussions on the European side (near Levent area) will be confirmed soonest.