Duncan Blake OBE

COBCOE Executive Committee Member
President, British Chamber of Commerce of Turkey
Chairman and CEO, Merko Gida

After completing his secondary education in Scotland, he read engineering at UMIST and followed this with a degree in Business Management at Manchester Business School before leaving the UK for Turkey, in 1975.

Setting up his own trading and brokerage business in the exportation of processed fruits and vegetables, he was a founder shareholder of Merko Gida, the company of which he continues to be Chairman and CEO, now a major exporter of processed tomatoes and other vegetables.

Presently the Chairman of the Meditteranean tomato processers (AMITOM) he was the first European Chairman of the World Processing Tomato Council.

His involvement with the British Chamber of Commerce in Turkey, itself an institution of over 100 years, being founded in the late 1800’s, goes back 20 years, and at present he is nearing the end of his second period as Chairman of the BCCT.

At the start of this second period as Chairman the Chamber was close to bankruptcy, with few members really involved and the Chamber offering very few services. Invoking a policy of “all or nothing”, membership dues were raised 6-fold, and combined with an increase in membership of 50% the Chamber is financially sound and independent and has been able to raise its profile, range of services and to generally perform much more to the benefit of the steadily increasing number of members.

Duncan was born in 1952 and is married with a daughter, son and step-daughter, and enjoys golf, skiing and less squash than in the past.