paintistanbul & Turkcoat 2021 was held successfully

paintistanbul & Turkcoat 2021 - Organic Coatings, Polymers and Related Materials Virtual Congress held successfully. paintistanbul & Turkcoat 2021 Organic Coatings, Polymers and Related Materials Congress welcomed its visitors in a virtual environment on 8-9 December 2021. The Virtual Congress ran for two days with 2 opening speeches and 10 sessions, featuring a total of 31 oral presentations and 17 poster presentations by domestic and international speakers. Scientists from universities, research institutes and industry shared their research results and presented the state of technological development in various fields globally. The Virtual Congress opened with speeches from İKMİB Chairman Adil Pelister, Bosad Chairman M. Akın Akçalı, Bosad Board Member and Exhibition and Congress Working Group Chairman Hakan Ünel, and Congress Scientific Committee Chairman Dr. Engin Çörüşlü. Organized by the Association of Paint Industry (Bosad) and İKMİB as main partner, with BASF as registration sponsor, the congress attracted 17 additional companies as sponsors. The paintistanbul & Turkcoat Virtual Congress, the only international congress in Turkey's paint industry, was successful with 804 spectators from Turkey and abroad. This year's paintistanbul & Turkcoat Virtual Congress featured presentations by experts on all aspects of the paint industry including nanoparticles, nanostructures, functional paints, testing and analysis, sustainable technologies, new raw materials and decorative paints, providing information on the latest sector developments and technologies. The chemical industry is working to contribute to supply processes, production, logistics, innovation and exports. Sustainable economic growth for the country depends on scaling up these activities in the economy. İKMİB Chairman Adil Pelister emphasized the necessity, stating: "To grow our industry and national economy and raise it to the level it deserves globally, we must set high targets" and continued: "As İKMİB, we have set our 2030 export target for chemicals at 40 billion dollars. We aim for high-technology, high-value-added products aligned with the new digital green economic principles we pursue." Pelister also announced that the Chemical Technologies Center, which will enable production of new and high-tech products for the industry and will house internationally accredited reference laboratories, an R&D center and a digital library, will open in 2022. Bosad Chairman M. Akın Akçalı said: "The Turkish paint industry, with a 1.5-2% share of the global paint market, is geographically positioned as a bridge between Europe, Asia and Africa. As industrialists, we have reached a level where we can compete with manufacturers worldwide in production technology and product quality, and we even transfer know-how in the most challenging markets where we enter with our own brands. We are proud of this achievement." Akçalı continued: "We expect our exports to grow 20% by tonnage by year-end. In this context, paintistanbul & Turkcoat Exhibition, held with participation from national and international paint, raw material, production equipment and packaging manufacturers, is critically important for export market growth. Organized by Artkim Fuarcılık A.Ş., the Exhibition could not be held for 2 years due to the pandemic. We will hold it from 17-19 March 2022 at Istanbul Expo Center with Covid-19 precautions in place." He concluded by thanking the academics, R&D and product development managers, researchers and audience who participated in the virtual congress. Hakan Ünel, Bosad Board Member and Exhibition and Congress Working Group Chairman, said: "Our goal is to contribute to our industry's vision and knowledge while establishing our congress as one of the world's most recognized and followed events. The importance and potential of our sector, positioned at the intersection of Europe, Asia and Africa, will increase in coming years with the right strategies. The international congress and exhibition cycle, complementing each other, will undoubtedly be one of the most important pillars of this development." Ünel added: "We have seen again that the future is shaped through science, research and development. Only in this way can we achieve our economic targets as the paint industry. This is precisely why we must strive to raise our congress to an even higher level each time." Bosad Congress Scientific Committee Chairman Dr. Engin Çörüşlü stated that the only way to differentiate in exports is to design products with unique or superior features and deliver high added value to customers through production and market presentation. Çörüşlü continued: "In other words, the goal is to create new products with high innovation levels. Companies have a tool to provide this opportunity: R&D departments capable of conducting qualified research. R&D departments require very important infrastructure. I am not referring to buildings and equipment. The main issue is the highly qualified researcher. Research is a field built on tradition. In our country, it is quite recent that research and researchers are beginning to emerge from universities and establish themselves in companies. The R&D incentive law was enacted in 2008. However, I believe we can overcome our lack of tradition through our highly qualified workforce. We need well-educated young people trained on the basis of science, critical reasoning and free thought rather than obedience to authority and belief, from primary school through university. To be innovative, we need researchers who can advance marginal, unconventional and unorthodox ideas, dare to ask important questions and seek answers, and take risks. Without such researchers, we can only achieve minor innovations through imitation, which will not raise our unit prices to desired levels. This is very clear. We must not forget this. A risky project is in a way a risky investment, as risky projects have relatively low success probabilities. They are like diving into unvisited deep seas that are still poorly understood, making them risky. In this regard, our company partners and senior managers should be willing to take risks like our researchers and accept that 10-15% of research projects are reserved for high-risk projects with low success probability. These projects carry high risk, but if successful, their returns will also be high." Dr. Çörüşlü concluded by noting that companies emphasizing research and ensuring their researchers have creative and ambitious space will have high competitive power, and only such companies can confidently advance into the future.