Alexandretta is a town on the edge of the Turkish and Arab worlds and a port city of moderate importance throughout its history and thus has had a very small population of Europeans resident there for centuries.

The liquorice factory.

The location of the MacAndrews & Forbes licorice processing plant in archive and recent view in İskenderun: Until recently the warehouses stood in a poor state, on Fener Cad., immediately behind the lighthouse, however they were demolished in 2010 with a view to develop the plot for high rise buildings and a shopping centre, yet ironically building permission hasn’t been granted by the authorities, so the ground remains vacant. Then in 2011 permission was given to the Hilton group to build a hotel, and in 2013 the construction was completed of the ‘Iskenderun Forbes Park’ hotel. The image below may also represent the MacAndrews & Forbes warehouses from an earlier era?

A group photo from 1900s, taken in front of the MacAndrews & Forbes Company licorice processing plant in Alexandretta - click here for a different view of this Forbes plant, taken from the Forbes family album. These families would be a mixture of Euro-Levantines, such as the Beard family who were active here for a few generations, and Eastern (Arab or Latin) Christians from Syria and Beirut and later generations with inter-marriage created some unique Levantine synthesis. - information courtesy of Osman Öndeş