Tolga Çeltekligil, General Manager of Bühler AG Turkey

We had a pleasant interview with Mr. Tolga Çeltekligil, General Manager of Bühler AG Turkey. Çeltekligil told about the Bühler AG Turkey's success story in Turkey.

Could you briefly tell our readers about yourself and your educational background?

After graduating from Sankt Georg Austrian High School, I obtained my bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering at Istanbul Technical University. I took my master's degree on "Control Systems and Robotics" from University of Manchester. I started my professional career at Siemens. I worked in various positions at Siemens such as business development manager, business sector manager, regional manager first in Istanbul-Turkey and then in Manchester-UK and finally in Nürnberg-Germany. Afterwards I have taken sales director and general manager responsibilities in multinational companies like Emerson and Metso, I became managing director of Bühler AG Turkey in 2016. Together with our current and growing team, we offer state-of-the-art Bühler technologies in every field to Turkish industry.

Could you tell us about the development of Bühler AG from its foundation to today?

Above all, Bühler is a 100% family-owned company, which has been manufacturing world-class, high-quality machinery and technology and has been managed by professionals on a non-stop basis for 159 years since 1860 when it was established. Bühler is the first company to have converted conventional milling methods to the industrial level during the first Industrial Revolution. Today, our Swiss-based company is operating in more than 140 countries and generates 3 billion Francs turnover as of 2018 with approximately 11,000 employees worldwide. Bühler differentiates itself from all other competitors in the market with 150 million Francs R&D budgets. During this period, the company has grown both organically and inorganically through acquisitions, and today it is one of the technology leaders specializing in milling and related process engineering in ink, paints and coatings, chemicals, nanotechnology, food, and automotive industries with 37 manufacturing sites and 100 service stations worldwide, one of which is located in Izmir, Turkey. Bühler manufactured the first flour mill in 1890, the first pasta production line in 1903, the first paint, coatings and ink three roll mills in 1919. It has carried out countless projects both in Turkey and worldwide in this market since 1959 by concentrating on 'Chemical Process Engineering'. Moreover, it has reinforced its strong position in low-viscosity paints, inks and coatings manufacturing technologies by acquiring Draiswerke GmbH (Drais) in 2006. Each year Bühler allocates an average of 5% of its total turnover to R&D; marked its vision with the motto "Innovations for a Better World."

What are the major industries that Bühler AG supplies products for and what kind of products are they? Can you tell us about products, brands and services?

Bühler's fields of activity are mainly divided into two categories: Food Processing Technologies and Advanced Materials Technologies. Around 4,000 different types of machines and technologies are produced in these two segments. About 25% of the technologies are patented by Bühler. On the food processing side, we are active in grain milling-processing and logistics, rice milling-processing, sorting (Sortex™) of rice and pulses, food drying technologies (Aeroglide™), animal feed production technologies, oil production technologies, consumer foods including mainly cocoa, chocolate, pasta and malt with all grinding, molding, packaging via complete process chain technology and installation. Bühler is one of the leading companies in the food technologies sector with a market share of 25% to 65% in these areas. Advanced materials technologies business area is divided into 3 main business units. These are aluminum die-casting technologies especially used in the automotive industry; coating technologies of glass, packaging, flexible electronics, lens coatings collected under the name of Leybold Optics and finally wet grinding and dispersing technologies for paints, inks and coatings, etc. Bühler is one of the leading companies in this sector as well with market shares ranging from 30% to 50% in these areas.

Could you please tell us about your product lines in the paints sector, which is among Bühler's fields of activity in Turkey, and their properties?

Bühler carries out its operations in this area under the 'Grinding & Dispersing' segment. Bühler is a company manufacturing machinery and technology for all processes where wet milling is needed, at all particle size distribution targets and for all product types with all viscosities, and at all scales. We manufacture Cenomic™ and Centex™ series, full-capacity horizontal bead mills and SuperFlow™ and MicroMedia™ series unique high-energy vertical bead mills for operations with low-to-medium-viscosity products. The newly developed pre-grinding machine called Macromedia™ technology was very well received in the market and we achieved significant sales volumes in Turkey as well. Besides Trinomic™ and Trias™ series three roll mill machines for operations with medium-to-high to extreme-viscosity products, we launched our Visconomic+™ series mills, which is the latest technology and were launched at the China Coat fair last December. In addition to these, we are also able to implement high-speed dispersers, press-out systems, let-down tanks, and complete plant installations at the desired automation level with our 'Engineering' department's expert teams on a turnkey basis. In the last 6 years, we could build 2 plants in these areas and more than 100 single machines were sold in Turkey which is a real success story.

Could you describe the importance of the Turkish market for Bühler AG?

After Bühler realized the first complete mill machine production in 1890, it can be said that it started its activities in 1903 with the first machine installation in Edirne. Bühler machines were used in Afyon in the 1920s and in Bursa in the 1930s. Since the beginning of 1950, Bühler has always been represented in Turkey. The establishment of a permanent office as Bühler Turkey occurred in the early 1980s. For us, Turkey has always been an attractive country with its unique dynamics and potential. In our country, there are really strong diversified industries spread across different areas. Our company is active in Turkey in all areas I just mentioned. This is not very common on a global scale. For this reason, we have built up a team of approximately 40 people with our business partners by expanding our local technical sales and service organization. Bühler's local market as well as "Grinding & Dispersing" business unit operations in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) are managed from Turkey. The Bühler experts in all areas where it operates, with headquarters in Istanbul and branch offices in Izmir and Ankara, are serving customers all over Turkey. Today, Bühler's machines are used in all regions of Turkey from Izmir to Mardin, from Gaziantep to Samsun, from Trabzon to Tekirdag, and from Kayseri to Bursa. Finally, together with our local project and procurement team, which we have established in Istanbul and working closely with our headquarters in Switzerland, we have built relationships with Turkish companies that embrace the creative, agile and high quality production understanding of Turkish industry, and we supply parts and equipment from here. In this sense, we contribute to our country's economy as foreign exchange input.

Could you tell us about your domestic and overseas sales activities?

We relocated our service station in Izmir in 2017 to its new location in Kemalpasa with 1,800 m². By this means, we were able to start comprehensive technical service in all areas we operate in Turkey and began to provide better spare parts services. At this center, we are able to offer workshop, seminar and training opportunities to our customers through the conference hall we have set up in the facility as well as performing various parts, machine maintenance and repair work, maintaining spare parts inventory, and providing service and process engineering services.

Finally, in the last quarter of 2018, we organized our seminar called 'Grinding and Dispersing Academy' in our service center with more than 100 participants.

In the organization where participants from many different sectors and different cities such as ink, paints and coatings, cosmetics, ceramics, mining, digital printing, nanotechnology, agrochemicals showed great interest, we met with all stakeholders and exchanged ideas on both technical and commercial basis. I think it is very important to create this synergy. For this reason, we will continue to organize such events regularly with the same enthusiasm every year. In addition to this, we can offer our test machine available in Turkey. We are able to set up our grinding mills which are used at one-to-one production scale at our customers' facilities, and experiment with technical and process support. Thus, companies who have not had the opportunity to work with Bühler machines have the chance to test their own products and machines on their own terms. Finally, we have started to offer our customers the opportunity to lease many of our machines through local arrangements. We are committed to bringing Bühler's global leadership to Turkey. We are able to meet Bühler's innovative and top-level technologies with Turkish manufacturers in accordance with country dynamics.

Could you tell us about your laboratory and R&D work? Do you have projects that you developed under the scope of university-industry collaboration? What are they?

Bühler has adopted the necessity of sustainable success as an unchanging corporate policy. The most important basis of this understanding is of course R&D. Each year Bühler allocates an average of 5% of its total turnover to R&D; it marks this vision with the motto "Innovations for a Better World". With an investment of approximately 80 million Francs at our headquarters in Uzwil, Switzerland, we began the construction of an innovation center called CUBIC about 2 years ago. We would like to continue being the center of technology and innovation with this complex, which will be operational in March 2019. In the innovation activities we have implemented under the name of "Digital Technologies", we have signed a partnership that has attracted attention throughout the sector. With the launch led by Microsoft's CEO, Bühler opened the door to an optimal user experience using Microsoft's cloud services on its digitally controlled machines and facilities. On the other hand, we cooperate with well-respected universities and research institutes around the world, as well as our R&D and test centers which are distributed in different geographies such as Switzerland, Germany, USA, Japan, China, and India. Bühler, which is one of the founders of the innovation campus of the Lausanne Polytechnic University (EPFL), also works on technologies of the future with its laboratory and team, and also supports technology start-ups through this center. ETH Zurich (Switzerland); University of Toronto (Canada), University of Minnesota (USA), University of Applied Sciences (Germany), Leibniz Institute for New Materials (Germany) are other Bühler partners where mutual R&D studies are ongoing.

Could you tell us about the work you conduct on environment and sustainability?

Bühler's main slogan, 'Innovations for a better world', emphasizes our commitment to being an ever-growing, ever-developing technology leader. We aim to contribute to people's quality of life by ensuring sustainable, independent development with our products, processes, and services and delivering 100% engineering achievement. Our company policy is comprised of 8 main principles: sustainable growth, viewing customer success as a criterion, comprehensive balanced product range, fruitful services, world-class local services, innovativeness, leadership in quality, and sound workforce. Bühler supports the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals Program and accepts it as a binding corporate target. Among the 17 sustainability targets offered by the UN, Bühler implements short- and long-term action plans for 30% reduction of food waste and 30% reduction in energy consumption. It is an important responsibility for Bühler to protect the environment. The environmental management concept is based on the observation of ecological impacts on economic and social issues and is binding upon all Bühler plants throughout the world.

Bühler is among the first companies accredited with ISO 14001 certification in Switzerland and is in full compliance with the targets determined by REACH regulations. Energy efficiency, another important part of environmental responsibility, holds high importance for Bühler.

With energy efficiency projects that we carried out at our central plant, we managed to reduce water consumption from 65,218 m³ to 56,300 m³ through distillation and recycling of different types of wastewater. This difference can be tangibly seen in our products and services offered to our customers. Based on approximate calculations, we install machinery and systems with total electrical power of 220-250 megawatts per year all around the world. It is always very pleasing for us to see that our customers perform high energy-efficient production. By continuously operating heat recovery systems, Bühler's engineers ensure we bring to market milling machinery with cooling and heating systems in the optimum operating range for each season.

Anything you want to add?

Bühler has become the dominant technology supplier for lithium-ion battery technologies, which we first started about 15 years ago. Especially in this sector, which we entered with an innovative process understanding through extrusion systems by eliminating simple, bulky, cost-effective and low-efficiency mixing technologies, we became a preferred brand of electric vehicle manufacturers that are spreading rapidly today. We are moving forward with turnkey projects in China, USA and now in Europe. We are in contact with organizations that plan to invest in this area in both laboratory and large-scale operations in Turkey as well. I hope that we will take mutual steps in this field to help Turkey catch up with the era. Finally, we are waiting for the kind visits of all our friends who want to get to know our new generation pre-grinding mill MacroMedia™ and our latest technology mill Visconomic+™. Thank you.