Kalekalıp, established in Istanbul in 1969, produces in-house designed infantry rifles, sniper rifles, machine guns and automatic grenade launchers.
Kalekalıp General Manager Selim Erol talked about Kalekalıp, its products and activities to Defensehere.com:
“KaleKalip was founded in 1969 to manufacture high precision mechanical parts and special purpose machines. Later in 1970s KaleKalip is specialized to manufacture precision molds for weapon industry. In 1980s KaleKalip was selected as a member of Euro Stinger project. In this project they took the responsibility of manufacturing 24 high precision mechanical and electro-mechanical system assemblies and manufacturing.
In 1990s KaleKalip is part of the production of Multi Rocket Launcher System with one of the leading companies in Turkey, they teamed up and they manufactured and qualified the Multi Rocket Launcher Systems. Later in 2006 KaleKalip was the first company in Turkey who designed and developed 40 mm grenade launcher.
In mid-2010s, precisely 2014, KaleKalip was selected as the main partner for design and development of Turkey’s National Infantry Rifle, which is called MPT-76. Together with a leading Turkish company, between 2014 and 2016, they completed this project successfully. With the infrastructure, which KaleKalip gained with this project, KaleKalip started to design and develop their own authentic products, starting from 2017.
Between 2017 and 2021, KaleKalip has successfully developed and qualified 10 different products in the small arms industry. And we are going to concentrate more to develop more products in the upcoming years and our target is to complete design and qualification of 8 new weapons in the upcoming two years and we will be more well known in the international market with our authentic designs.
In parallel with the vision that we are targeting to grow in the international market, we spend tremendous amount to develop new business in this field. We are in contact with more than 20 different countries, where we have representatives in the countries that we want to grow and those efforts gave up the result and we get the first orders for the infantry rifle from a South African country in 2019 and 2020. We already produced and shipped those weapons; I mean the first shipment and we expect to get more orders from the country.
For our 7.62 mm semiautomatic sniper rifle, which is called KMR762, we got the first order from a South African user and we already completed the shipment early this year, 2022. And we also received another order recently from Indonesian Police Forces, for the first batch we are targeting to complete the shipment mid of 2022 and again it’s a first shipment, we expect to have more orders when the first shipment is realized.”