We had an interview with Euro Istanbul Founder and General Manager Mr. Necip Polat.

We conducted an interview with Euro Istanbul Founder and General Manager Necip Polat. Polat provided information about the products and services offered by Euro Istanbul.

Could you please briefly tell us about your educational and professional background?

I entered the sector in 1974 with Gür Galvano Kimya. I sold chemicals used in electroplating plants at this company, which operated until 2008. Over a 34-year period, I gained extensive knowledge of electroplating processes while supplying chemicals to the industry. The foundation of Euro Istanbul was built on the knowledge I acquired from Gür Galvano Kimya. Could you please provide information about Euro Istanbul's history and milestones? I established Euro Istanbul in 2002 to manufacture electroplating plants while Gür Galvano Kimya continued its operations. The company manufactures and installs turnkey fully automatic and manual coating plants. The company has upgraded its technical staff and machinery in line with evolving market requirements. To serve domestic and foreign customers effectively, the company has operated from its Beylikdüzü facility—a 5,000 m2 closed-area factory located in İstanbul, Beylikdüzü Mermerciler Sanayi Sitesi—since May 2013. Specializing in project planning, design and manufacturing of automatic and manual facilities, our company has established itself as a trusted brand in manufacturing surface finishing equipment as well. Supported by its growing market share, our company continues to expand its activities in foreign markets daily, producing high-quality turnkey fully automatic and manual coating plants and installations according to international standards.

Which industries does Euro Istanbul primarily serve, and what products does it offer? Could you please provide information about Euro Istanbul's products, brands and services?

Our company manufactures and installs manual coating plants as well as automatic coating plants such as suspension and barrel systems. Although we serve a very broad range, I can list the main facilities we manufacture and install: Zinc Plating Plants, Nickel Chrome Plating Plants, ABS Plating Plants, Anodizing and Hard Anodizing Plants. We manufacture fully automatic drying, passivation and lacquering lines featuring speed and temperature-adjustable centrifugal dryers for both rapid and economical drying of plated materials for serial production and bulk purposes. We also manufacture various products used in electroplating plants such as disc and cartridge filters for filtering plating chemicals, PP and PVC fans for removing coating chemicals and gases from the work environment, scrubbers and mist eliminators that remove gases produced by industrial facility operations and clean such gases before atmospheric release. Additionally, we manufacture all types of tanks for electroplating processes, from Titan to PVDF in our facility. The company also manufactures all tank accessories such as blowers, agitators and the like.

Could you tell us about your domestic and international sales activities? To which regions does Euro Istanbul mainly export, and what products?

In 2005, we began expanding abroad with our first fully automatic coating line manufacturing, and overseas sales capacity now exceeds domestic sales. We manufacture and install coating plants in compliance with high quality and international standards for many countries, especially in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. France, Romania, Slovenia, Greece, Russia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Israel, Egypt and Lebanon are among the countries to which I can recall we currently export. At present, our factory is producing a Full Automatic Acid Zinc Coating Plant and a Full Automatic Nickel Chrome Plating Plant for Bosnia and Herzegovina. We plan to install one plant in April and the other in May in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In February, we will install in Lebanon the manual silver and gold plating line that was produced in 2018. We expect the completion of the factory building in Russia for the installation of four Full Automatic Coating Plants that we produced in 2018. We have dealers in Slovenia, Greece, Russia, Egypt and Israel. Looking forward, we aim to further increase our number of dealers and expand our export and production capacity in parallel.

What are your views on innovation and R&D? What are the popular technologies in the industry?

Our goal is to position our company at the top of the list of preferred coating plant manufacturers in terms of technology and quality. For this reason, we place great importance on innovation and recognize its value. The distinguishing feature of our sector is that we do not engage in mass production. We view ourselves as tailors who create garments according to customer needs. We produce plants according to each customer's business, capacity expectations, the installation area, and each plant we produce is distinctly different from the others. This itself drives our R&D activities. We also make R&D investments in both qualified personnel and necessary equipment to develop our technology and product range. We have begun to benefit from our R&D investments in recent years. In 2017, we installed our first automatic vibratory load & unload station in Izmir. This station, developed through approximately one year of R&D work, unlocks screws before they enter the plating line. Screws are first brought to a vibration vessel by an elevator bucket. Locked screws are then unlocked through vibration and sent to the drum after weighing. This reduces workforce requirements and achieves better coating quality. In 2018, we developed our first robots, which we call lateral robots, to enable fully automatic plating plant installation in factories with limited space.

Could you provide information about Euro Istanbul's environmental policy and sustainability approach? What activities and measures are undertaken in worker health and safety?

The health and safety of our employees is our highest priority. In this regard, we fulfill all necessary local and international obligations in accordance with our responsibilities. As we achieve sustainable and stable earnings, we respect the health of our employees, our community and our consumers. We operate as an environmentally responsible company while fulfilling our corporate social responsibility obligations. We are aware of our environmental responsibility. In plant ventilation systems, we design our gas scrubber towers to clean atmospheric emissions above levels stipulated by international standards, and we fulfill all responsibilities to leave a livable world for our children.

What are Euro Istanbul's priority criteria when creating investment plans? Does Euro Istanbul have investment plans for the near and distant future?

Plant production time varies according to size and averages 2-3 months. Therefore, when we produce two plants within a three-month period, we have full workload, and when we are not in production, we experience downtime. Because we depend on customer investment plans, medium-term planning is not feasible. Therefore, when creating our investment plans, we make strategic decisions to increase production capacity by considering global economic conditions. In 2017, we doubled our production area and machine park. We have several projects for series production in 2019. We are planning to utilize our idle time from plant production.