DHL Supply Chain Türkiye’s new cold room investment for Lilly Türkiye is more than an incremental warehouse upgrade. Announced on 25 August 2026, the expansion of a partnership that dates back to 1995 signals how global pharmaceutical companies are treating Türkiye as a higher-stakes operating market, where patient access, regulated distribution, temperature integrity and local execution capacity increasingly shape investment decisions.
A 30-Year Partnership Moves Into Cold Chain Expansion
According to DHL’s 25 August 2026 press release, DHL Supply Chain Türkiye has added a new cold room at its Avrupa 3 facility to support Lilly Türkiye’s growing healthcare logistics needs. DHL said the investment will strengthen temperature-controlled storage and distribution for sensitive healthcare products, from warehousing through final delivery.
The companies did not disclose the capital expenditure, square meters, pallet capacity or precise temperature bands of the new cold room. That omission matters for investors seeking to benchmark the project. Still, the operational figures DHL did publish are telling. DHL said its Lilly network has expanded from an initial four provinces to distribution coverage reaching 97 percent of Türkiye. Since 2025, volumes have doubled, while value-added service volume has tripled.
For a pharmaceutical investor, those figures point to a market in which logistics capacity is no longer a back-office cost center. It is a condition for commercial scale. Lilly Türkiye General Manager Ryan Dawson framed the investment around continuity of access to medicines, particularly in cardiometabolic health. DHL Supply Chain Türkiye General Manager Buket Cox emphasized value-added services, temperature-controlled distribution and end-to-end health logistics.
That language reflects a broader shift in multinational pharmaceutical strategy. The most valuable products in global pipelines increasingly require tighter distribution control, stronger documentation, route validation, temperature monitoring and last-mile reliability. In Türkiye, where geography, regulation and pricing policy all affect patient access, the warehouse becomes a strategic asset.
Türkiye’s Pharmaceutical Market Is Bigger, More Complex and More Regulated
The investment arrives as Türkiye’s pharmaceutical market continues to expand in nominal terms. The İlaç Endüstrisi İşverenler Sendikası, or İEİS, reports that the Turkish pharmaceutical market reached TRY 430.8 billion in 2025 at ex-factory prices, with unit sales of 2.7 billion boxes. İEİS, citing IQVIA data, also says Türkiye ranked 19th in the global pharmaceutical market in 2025, while the world market reached USD 1.9 trillion.
The Presidency of the Republic of Türkiye Investment Office gives a similar strategic framing. In its life sciences sector profile, the Investment Office says Türkiye’s pharmaceutical market grew 53.8 percent in value in 2024 to TRY 324.6 billion, while unit sales reached 2.57 billion. It also reports around 820 companies in the industry, 109 pharmaceutical and radiopharmaceutical production facilities, 13 raw material production facilities and almost 50,000 employees.
For foreign investors, the most important detail is not just market size. It is product mix. The Investment Office says biotechnological products accounted for 18.8 percent of prescription products by value in 2024. İEİS reports that biotechnological products reached TRY 90.9 billion and 33.3 million boxes in 2025, while biosimilars reached TRY 8.2 billion and 11.7 million boxes.
Biologics, specialty drugs, diabetes therapies and many injectables are highly sensitive to temperature excursions. As these categories grow, the investment case for validated storage, qualified transport, traceability systems and professional third-party logistics becomes stronger. A pharma company can register a product, appoint a distributor and win reimbursement, but the commercial promise can still fail if logistics capacity does not protect the product in transit.
This is where market entry strategy and project management become linked. A foreign company evaluating Türkiye must assess demand, payer dynamics and therapeutic opportunity, but also whether the physical distribution model can sustain national coverage. Site selection for warehousing, distributor due diligence, quality agreements, import flows and service-level governance become central elements of the investment plan.
DHL’s Global Healthcare Strategy Comes to Türkiye
DHL’s Türkiye investment is also a local expression of a global capital allocation strategy. In April 2025, DHL Group announced a EUR 2 billion investment by 2030 in DHL Health Logistics. The company said 25 percent of that spending would be allocated to EMEA, with the rest divided between the Americas and Asia Pacific. DHL said the program would cover storage, order fulfillment, distribution, global shipping and last-mile delivery.
The same DHL Group announcement said life sciences and healthcare logistics generated more than EUR 5 billion in global revenue in 2024 and that the company expected another EUR 5 billion in incremental revenue by 2030. DHL also said it operated nearly 600 life sciences and healthcare sites, hubs and warehouses across close to 130 countries, with more than 2.5 million square meters of temperature-controlled warehouse space.
The Türkiye cold room therefore fits a competitive global pattern. Healthcare logistics providers are racing to build multi-temperature networks for pharmaceuticals, clinical trials, biopharma and advanced therapies. The capital intensity is rising because customers increasingly demand both resilience and proof. It is not enough to move a product quickly. The logistics provider must demonstrate that the product remained within validated parameters, that deviations were recorded and investigated, and that the system can withstand disruption.
Türkiye’s geography gives such investments an additional dimension. The Investment Office’s logistics and transportation profile says Türkiye sits within a four-hour flight radius of 67 countries, 1.3 billion people and economies with a combined GDP of USD 30 trillion. It also reports USD 280 billion invested in transport and logistics subsectors between 2003 and 2024.
For pharmaceutical companies, that geography is useful only if regulatory-grade infrastructure exists. A cold room in Istanbul is not merely local warehousing. It can support national distribution, regional contingency planning, import-export coordination and, potentially, broader hub strategies for nearby markets if customs, licensing and product registration questions are aligned.
Pricing, Reimbursement and Access Remain Core Investment Risks
The Lilly-DHL announcement should not be read as a simple growth story. Türkiye’s pharmaceutical opportunity remains bound to a demanding pricing and reimbursement environment.
In a 2025 article in the Journal of Health Systems and Policies, Öznur Seyhun described pharmaceutical market access in Türkiye as a multi-stage process involving approval, pricing and reimbursement. The study identified bureaucratic delays, limited transparency in pricing and reimbursement complexity as key entry barriers, while also noting opportunities through local production incentives, alternative reimbursement agreements and early access programs.
Pricing reform has also become a live issue in 2026. Gün + Partners reported that Presidential Decision No. 11031, dated 12 March 2026, increased the Euro/Turkish lira adjustment rate used for pricing human medicinal products from 60 percent to 65 percent and introduced the term value-based pricing into Turkish legislation for the first time. The firm noted that from 1 April 2026 the pharmaceutical Euro rate would be TRY 29.1164, while warning that the adjustment alone may not resolve access problems for innovative therapies.
Turkish Minute, citing the Official Gazette and the All Pharmacist Employers Union, reported in March 2026 that the reference euro rate increase amounted to about 14.9 percent in two stages. It also reported that TEIS warned the reference rate remained far below the market exchange rate, putting pressure on imported medicines and raw materials.
For foreign investors, this creates a double requirement. Commercial teams need a pricing and reimbursement strategy, while operations teams need a continuity plan. Imported active ingredients, finished products, cold-chain consumables, data loggers, refrigeration equipment and spare parts may all be exposed to currency movements and customs procedures. Legal and tax compliance, import-export planning and government relations are therefore not administrative afterthoughts. They shape whether the product can be supplied reliably and profitably.
The FDI Angle Is Operational, Not Just Financial
The DHL-Lilly expansion illustrates a form of FDI that is often underappreciated in headline investment coverage. It is not a new factory announcement or a large acquisition. It is a capability investment embedded in an existing operating platform. For Türkiye, such projects matter because they strengthen the service layer that enables higher-value manufacturing, imports, clinical activity and regional distribution.
The Investment Office says pharmaceutical exports rose from USD 995 million in 2017 to USD 2.3 billion in 2024, and that Turkish pharmaceutical manufacturers export to more than 186 countries. Those numbers point to a sector that is no longer defined only by domestic consumption. Yet export-oriented pharma, local packaging, secondary manufacturing and specialty distribution all require credible quality systems.
An investor considering Türkiye must decide whether to incorporate locally, operate through an affiliate, use a distributor, establish a warehouse, contract with a GDP-capable logistics provider, or combine several of those models. Each choice carries regulatory, tax, labor and liability implications. Company incorporation and corporate structuring affect contracting and tax exposure. Investment incentives may influence whether to build or outsource infrastructure. Legal and tax compliance determines how products, services, employment and intercompany arrangements are documented. Government relations matter because pharmaceutical regulation sits across health, trade, customs, social security and investment bodies.
The new cold room also has implications for value-added services. DHL said VAS volume for Lilly has tripled since 2025. In pharmaceutical logistics, value-added services can include labeling, kitting, packaging changes, order preparation, returns handling, quality segregation, recall support and documentation. These functions can be commercially powerful, but they can also trigger regulatory questions. A task that looks operational may require authorization if it touches product presentation, serialization, storage conditions or release processes.
This is why project management is critical in healthcare FDI. Facilities, quality agreements, customs brokers, IT systems, warehouse teams, regulatory consultants and commercial managers must move in sequence. A missed license, unclear responsibility matrix or poorly documented temperature deviation can delay launch or create compliance exposure.
What This Means for Foreign Investors
The DHL Supply Chain Türkiye and Lilly Türkiye expansion is a practical signal that Türkiye’s healthcare market is moving toward more sophisticated operating requirements. Demand is growing, especially in high-value therapeutic areas, but the market rewards investors that prepare for regulation, reimbursement, logistics and execution together.
A foreign pharmaceutical, medical device or healthcare logistics company evaluating Türkiye should start with a market entry assessment that tests product demand, reimbursement feasibility, route-to-market options and competitor positioning. It should then map incorporation and corporate structuring choices against tax, contracting and liability needs. If the project involves warehousing, packaging, manufacturing support, R&D or export activity, the investment incentives review should begin early, because eligibility often depends on project scope, location, technology level and documentation.
Legal and tax compliance must cover pharmaceutical licensing, data protection, customs, pricing rules, employment, quality agreements and distributor contracts. Government relations are also material, since investors may need structured engagement with health, trade, customs, investment and social security authorities. Import-export planning is essential for medicines, raw materials, devices, cold-chain equipment and spare parts. Expo and trade-fair representation can support supplier screening, distributor identification and commercial visibility, but it should be tied to a clear regulatory and market access strategy rather than treated as stand-alone promotion.
The main lesson from the DHL-Lilly case is that Türkiye’s FDI opportunity in healthcare is not only about entering a large market. It is about building an operating model that can deliver regulated products continuously across a complex national geography. For investors, the winners will be those that align commercial ambition with cold-chain capability, compliance discipline and on-the-ground execution from the start.