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Yıldız Holding A.Ş.
Yıldız Holding is a giant Turkish food and retail group that makes and sells biscuits, chocolate, snacks and other packaged foods, and also runs a discount supermarket chain.
Yıldız Holding is one of Turkey's largest family-owned businesses, and at its core it is a food company. Its most famous brand is Ülker, which sells biscuits, chocolate, candy, and snacks across Turkey and many export markets. If you have ever eaten a chocolate-covered biscuit or a packaged cake from a Turkish brand, there is a good chance it came from this group.
The company's reach goes well beyond snacks. Through its retail arm, it runs Şok Marketler, a fast-growing chain of small discount supermarkets that has become one of the biggest grocery retailers in Türkiye. The group also has operations in bakery products, oils, and other food categories, and over the years it has built a large international footprint, selling its products in more than 100 countries and owning manufacturing plants in several of them. Yıldız Holding's history is a genuine rags-to-riches story. It began in 1944 as a small biscuit shop in Istanbul founded by Sabri Ülker and his brother. From those humble beginnings, the family turned a local bakery into a national food empire, and the Ülker brand became a household name in Türkiye. The holding company grew by buying rivals and expanding abroad, and it once owned Godiva, the Belgian luxury chocolate maker, before selling it in 2023 as part of a push to simplify the business and pay down debt.
That debt is an important part of the story. Over the years the group took on heavy borrowing to fund acquisitions and expansion, and at times it had to restructure its loans with banks. More recently it has focused on tightening up: selling non-core assets, growing Şok Marketler, and leaning on the steady cash that everyday food sales generate. The simple logic of the business is that people buy biscuits and groceries whether the economy is booming or struggling, which makes Yıldız Holding a fairly resilient company even when times are tough.
Saved answer · last researched 10 Nov 2026