The initial public offering (IPO) of 30 percent of the Trabzon Port, whose right to operate is held by Turkey's Albayrak, is expected to be completed within this month, the company said yesterday.

According to the statement by the company, the unit share price in the public offering was determined as TL 15.5 (around $4.12). While the size of the public offering will be around TL 97.7 million, the total value of the company will be around TL 325.5 million.

It was also reported that the public offering will take place in the form of joint sales and a nominal value of TL 6.3 million belonging to Albayrak Turizm Seyahat İnşaat Ticaret A.Ş. will be offered. It was also said 90 percent of the allocations of the public offering will be directed to domestic individual investors, while 10 percent will be directed to domestic institutional investors.

According to the information provided, the Trabzon Port plans to distribute at least 70 percent of its distributable profit in cash in the next five years.

With the public offering, the Trabzon Port will have the title of the first port to be traded on the stock market. "After the public offering of the Trabzon Port, we are committed to the public offering of all of our business," Albayrak Group CEO Ömer Bolat said.

Meanwhile, in a statement in early December last year, the Trabzon Port said an agreement was signed with Deniz Yatırım for the public offering of the port, which stands out for its steady income structure.

The Trabzon Port, which dates back centuries, served for many years as one of the five important ports of the Ottoman Empire. The new port, whose foundation was laid July 8, 1946, was modernized with work that began in 1980 to respond to increasing ship traffic. Following the acquisition of the 30-year operation right by the Albayrak Group in 2003, the handling capacity of the Trabzon Port increased from 3.9 million to 10 million tons. Today, the Trabzon Port is the largest port in the eastern Black Sea region with the amount of cargo handled and the size of the port area.