In our interview, Chairman of the board of Botersan, Mr. Ercüment Birsen answered our questions. Mr. Birsen gave information about products and services offered by Botersan.
Could you please briefly tell us about your educational and professional background?
I was born in Pristina (Kosovo) on 25.02.1946. After living 11 years in Pristina, as free immigrants we have emigrated to Turkey on 18.02.1957. I studied at Meto Bayraktar Primary School in Pristina. I have been living in Istanbul since 1957. Respectively,
I graduated from Gedik Paşa Secondary School, İstanbul Boys’ High School and Istanbul Technical University, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, in 1968.
My business life started in 1968 at the Maritime Bank (Denizcilik Bankası) Camialtı shipyard. After fulfilled my military obligation as a reserve officer between 1969-1971, I continued my duty at Camialtı shipyard. After I decided to move to the private sector in 1974, I worked for Karmasan Company for 10 months.
Between 1975 and 1984, I worked for Alarko companies Almim, Alamsaş and Alsaç, respectively. In the beginning of 1984, with my three friends whom I met from Alarko, I established, Botersan A.Ş. Since 1983, I have been serving as the Chairman of the Board of Directors of our company.
Could you please give information about Botersan’s history and milestones? What’s the current structure of Botersan today?
As serving in the surface treatment sector, which is a very demanding field of work, Botersan’s success today is based on the fact that, Botersan is managed by 4 professional Alarko-based friends, each of whom is at the head of their businesses. I am responsible for the management and project.
Bekir Alparslan is responsible for the design. Orhan Özçanak is in charge of manufacturing. Tevfik Alpsar is responsible for the assembly. Founded 36 years ago in a small project office in Samatya, Botersan moved to Bayrampaşa’s 4 storey production site in 1985.
In 1990, Botersan was moved to the prefabricated building in Beylikdüzü in order to make the large and bulky projects better.
In order to better serve its customers in 2002, it has improved its machinery and built a new building on the back side of its existing building, increasing its capacity and indoor area from 3500 m² to 11.000 m². It produces turnkey solutions in its modern production facilities.
To which industries and with what kind of products does Botersan mainly serve? Could you please give information about Botersan’s products, brands and services?
With its 36 years of knowledge, experience and strong references, our Company covers a wide range of industries including metal industry, automotive and automotive supply industry, white goods, wood and plastic industries.
By increasing its product range since foundation, main production subject of Botersan is paint shops, and we can summarize these paint shops in seven main branches such as; surface cleaning, wet painting booths, powder painting booths, cataphoresis paint, drying and baking furnaces, conveyors.
Surface treatment, which is the first subject of surface treatment, is divided into two types as dipping and spray tunnel type. Iron phosphating, zinc phosphating or chromating processes and nanotechnology solutions are applied considering the environment, material structure and desired corrosion resistance of the part.
Painting, the stage after surface cleaning, can be grouped as wet and powdered. The wet painting is done in wide range - water curtain, positive pressure venturi washing system and dry type - of environmentally friendly and highly efficient working Botersan wet paint booths. This provides a quiet and clean working environment without disposal of paint out of the factory.
Botersan has started in a leading position in Turkey for powder coating applications. In powder coating applications, Botersan has increased the quality of paint application in hundreds of facilities it has established with powder coating booths with cartridge and sintered lamella filters.
One of the latest and most advanced coating technologies in our country and in the world is the electrostatic coating application - an electrocoating process which is based on electrochemistry principles.
In cataphoresis painting, all parts can be coated equally and completely on the whole body, providing high efficiency with high corrosion resistance and recovery system.
As a water based system, it is an application sought by many sectors due to its superior and technological features such as creating less environmental pollution and having less fire risk. Botersan’s experience and quality with turn-key cataphoresis paint systems reliably apply its solutions.
For drying and baking the part before and after painting, Botersan manufactures drying, wet and powder coating furnaces as modular. Continuous and box type applications are available too. One of the most important elements required for coating lines for continuous coating is conveyor.
The initial design and manufacturing of Webb type and Cardain type conveyor trolley trains in Turkey were firstly carried out by our company.
Also the mutlicyclone and filtered type paint booths are firstly designed and manufactured in 1986-1987 by Botersan. The conveyor systems in our complete paint house solutions have the quality of Botersan.
Besides all these, our company produces all kinds of fans, heat generators, uniaxial painting robots and electrical panels that are used in our systems.
Could you please tell about your domestic and international sales activities? To which regions and what kind of products does Botersan mainly sell?
Our company, which had been serving mainly to the domestic market until the last 10 years, after completing ISO and CE studies in 2007, has focused on projects abroad.
Our company, which has been renewing itself in world standards by changing to ISO 9001-2015 system and CE 2006- 42 directive, has signed a number of high capacity facilities in recent years, such as Azenco/Azerbaijan, Prime/Ukraine, Rock Scale/Kuwait, First Gas/Egypt Repkon/Iraq and Repkon/Bangladesh.
Our main export countries are Bulgaria, Egypt, Azerbaijan, Jordan, Algeria, Tunisia, Russia, Ukraine, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Qatar, France, Germany, Romania and Bangladesh.
Could you please give information about Botersan’s innovation and R&D studies? Do you have any projects that were developed in the context of university - industry cooperation?
For especially serving to the domestic and foreign market at a low cost with high technology and quality products, our company continuous work on innovation. Botersan is also supported by KOSGEB for R&D studies. Our various R&D program and prototype works are continuing on our topics.
Can you give information about Botersan’s environmental policy and sustainability approach? What kind of works and studies are performed in the area of worker health and safety?
Since its foundation, Botersan has produced environmental friendly technologies and demonstrated the value of human health.
We act with the belief that all occupational accidents and occupational diseases can be prevented with the aim of creating the consciousness and culture necessary for occupational health and safety of all employees in our workplace.
Our goal is to create safe and healthy working environments, to create safe working environments by emergency, business continuity and work permit systems, and in all our activities to comply with the legal activities related to occupational health and safety.
What are the priority criteria of Botersan when creating investment plans? Does Botersan have any investment plans in near and far future?
By renewing our old machines in our machinery park, we try to follow the technological developments and improve the quality of our facilities. Our investment plans are prepared monthly and annually for the coming periods.
Our main goal in creating investment plans is, to raise our production facility to the highest technology without compromising our existing quality.
