La Lorraine Appoints Hüseyin Ödemiş as Middle East General Manager: Turkey Will Be the Center of Regional Growth

La Lorraine Bakery Group has entrusted the management of its Middle East operations to Hüseyin Ödemiş. Ödemiş began his role as Middle East General Manager on August 3, 2026. He will report to Neslihan Nigiz Ulak, Vice President responsible for Turkey and the Middle East; his key responsibilities will include managing regional growth, strengthening organizational capacity, and enhancing commercial performance. Ödemiş also confirmed his new role on his LinkedIn account, stating that he will work with teams and partners in the Middle East.

The career profile behind this appointment is particularly noteworthy in terms of regional sales and distribution. According to information reported by BBM Magazine, Ödemiş has worked in the European, Middle Eastern, and African markets throughout his approximately 20-year career. He held various roles in sales, commercial operations, category and distributor management, and strategic planning during his 15 years at P&G, which he joined in 2007. He then served as a board member and business unit leader at Korozo Group; most recently, he was the Country Director for Al Safi Danone in the United Arab Emirates.

However, the main significance of this development from StaffMag's perspective lies not in the resume but in La Lorraine's regional structuring. According to the company's official statement from May 2026, the Istanbul office manages not only sales and operations in Turkey but also activities in the Middle East. The same statement notes that Turkey is positioned as a regional "growth hub" and that the goal is to expand growth into North Africa in the later stages.

This structure is also supported on the production side. La Lorraine's facility in Manisa, Turkey, currently operates with five production lines, and the company describes the facility as a strategic production center for Turkey and the Middle East. La Lorraine announced that it has invested over 100 million euros in production in Turkey over the last 10 years and that it launched a new artisan bread line in 2026. The company also reports that it has doubled its sales in Turkey over the last five years and aims to double them again by 2030. These are the company's own growth and investment statements and should not be evaluated as independent market share data.

There are also two employee figures that appear different at first glance regarding the scale of operations in Turkey. According to the official statement, La Lorraine Turkey's direct employee count is approximately 350. When the distributor network is taken into account, it is said that there is approximately 750 people employed in the ecosystem. Therefore, the two figures are not alternatives to each other; they represent different scopes.

Another important pillar of the physical infrastructure in the Middle East is the United Arab Emirates. La Lorraine launched its local production facility in Abu Dhabi in November 2022. The facility focuses on the production of bake-off breads that are partially baked, frozen, and finished at the point of sale. Thus, the company's Middle East strategy is shaped to create production capacity within the region rather than just exporting products from Europe or Turkey.

The company's corporate data also indicates that the Middle East is part of a broader international growth plan. La Lorraine currently operates with 18 production facilities in over 40 markets. The group's revenue for 2025 reached €1.57 billion, a 7.5% increase; REBITDA grew by 9.1% to €227 million. The company also executed €218 million in CAPEX that year and announced plans for a record investment program of approximately €250 million for 2026.

However, La Lorraine's management does not present the 2025 performance as a completely smooth growth story. The company acknowledges that volume growth has remained lower than expected and that price competition in the market has intensified. Therefore, in the 2026 strategy, volume growth, cost control, economies of scale, and achieving higher utilization rates of existing new production capacity are emphasized.

The appointment of the Middle East General Manager can also be interpreted in this context. The company has established production infrastructure in the region, created additional capacity in Turkey, and designated Istanbul as a regional commercial center. In the next phase, the role will not only be to increase sales volume but also to manage distributors, foodservice customers, pricing, product portfolio, and operational capacity across different countries within the same growth plan. This assessment is an editorial conclusion drawn from the organization's and investment structure disclosed by the company.

Why is it important for HORECA?

La Lorraine's Frozen Bakery business unit serves professional foodservice channels, including restaurants, hotels, catering, and coffee shops. The group clearly identifies Turkey and the Middle East as one of the international expansion areas for frozen bake-off products.

The bake-off model creates a different operational logic, especially in HORECA. Preparing products at a central facility, freezing them, and completing the final baking at the point of use allows businesses to offer fresh products throughout the day and manage stock according to demand. La Lorraine also states that this method can reduce food waste through inventory management; this benefit is based on the company's own technology assessment and should not be assumed to occur at the same rate in every business.

For hotels, cafés, and restaurants, suppliers transitioning to regional production can affect not only product options but also delivery times, stock security, minimum orders, product standardization, and technical support. Especially for chains that want to maintain the same product standard across different countries in multi-branch operations, managing the production and distributor network together becomes critical.

In our opinion: The significance of this appointment lies not just in a company selecting a new general manager, but in the growing role of Turkey as an international HORECA supplier in the Middle East management and production chain. When read together, the Manisa production center, regional management in Istanbul, and the Abu Dhabi facility show that La Lorraine manages the market as an integrated region rather than an export model selling to individual countries. A broader lesson that can be drawn for food and HORECA suppliers in Turkey is that opening up to the Middle East is not limited to finding distributors; it requires local production, a regional management team, technical sales, product adaptation, and a strong distribution infrastructure. The success of the appointment will be demonstrated not by the title but by regional sales volume, new foodservice customers, utilization of production capacity, and development of the distribution network in the upcoming period.