We conducted an enjoyable interview with Organik Kimya's Emir Argün.

Global Director of Building Solutions at Organik Kimya A.Ş. Emir Argün discusses the company's development process and products supplied to the sector; we conducted an engaging interview on the problems and solutions in Turkey's building chemicals market. Could you briefly tell our readers about yourself, your education and professional background? After graduating from Istanbul Saint Joseph High School, I obtained my Bachelor's degree in Chemistry from Johns Hopkins University in the United States in 2002. Following various international work experiences in different sectors, I returned to Turkey in 2007 and began working at a multinational company in the chemical sector, completing my MBA at Bilgi University during the same period. Subsequently, I held commercial and management positions in different product groups of the Chemistry sector for 8 years. I then joined the Organik Kimya family and have served as Global Director of Building Solutions for the past three years.

Could you brief us on the position and significance of the Building Solutions business unit you oversee within Organik Kimya?

With revenues doubled over the last 5 years, we are Organik Kimya's fastest-growing business unit. As of 2017, we represent 20% of total Organik Kimya revenues. We continue to expand daily in polymer emulsions and powder polymer product groups with over 300 partners in 55 countries. Our business unit is one of those that most clearly demonstrates our company's global strength and position, and one of the most supported units in investment and R&D activities. What applications do you provide solutions for? We provide solutions for all building chemical applications based on both cement and acrylic dispersions. We can briefly categorize our application areas: ceramic applications, thermal insulation system applications, waterproofing systems, flooring applications, gypsum-based coatings and filling materials, concrete curing agents and concrete admixtures, mastics, dispersion agents, rheology modifier agents. Could you discuss your domestic and international sales activities? What types of products do you primarily sell to which regions domestically and internationally? In the building chemicals sector we serve, we are one of five companies globally with equally strong capabilities in powder polymer and polymer emulsion product groups and able to develop solutions for all applications. Additionally, we are market leaders in Turkey in the building chemicals sector for polymer emulsions and powder polymer product groups. While we achieve 35% of our total revenues in Turkey, the remaining 65% is realized in other countries, with a large portion in Europe. Looking at powder polymers, in a Turkish market that was previously entirely import-dependent, with our investment in Tuzla in 2011, we now serve a large portion of the sector as a domestic producer. While the European market is attractive given its current size and position, considering market growth rate, sustainability and future prospects, our 20-person commercial and technical team provides our solutions across a broad geography from America to Africa, from the Middle East to Asia Pacific.

What type of work do you undertake as Organik Kimya in the areas of innovation and R&D?

As of 2017, we spent 3% of our total revenues on R&D activities, but in our view, innovation is not a matter concerning R&D alone. As Organik Kimya, the concept of innovation forms the main axis of our philosophy for competing in both global and local markets. The innovation awards we have received both domestically and internationally in recent years confirm that we are on the right path and give us courage. The point we pay most attention to here is the efficiency and speed of innovation being converted to real products and sales. To manage this, we have created different Innovation Councils for all business units within Organik Kimya. We manage our projects with colleagues from different disciplines such as R&D, production, sales and marketing, and we are collectively responsible to senior management. Over the past 3 years, various criteria such as the share of revenue from newly developed product sales in the company's total revenue, the sales rates of genuinely innovative products, and the payback rate of investments made during the R&D phase of these products are included in the job descriptions and targets of all relevant Innovation Council members. This has made innovation culture an inevitable part of our lives. The rapid and strong growth we have demonstrated in the building chemicals sector in recent years is actually a result of this innovation culture.

Could you provide information about Organik Kimya's environmental policy and sustainability approach?

Sustainability, together with innovation, is an integral part of our strategy to ensure the continuity of our business and future generations. We continuously strive to optimize our energy and water consumption. We use 100% renewable energy in our production. We regularly review our waste management and reduce our emissions. Occupational safety is most important to us, and we are committed to making it a culture by providing our employees with adequate information and training. In addition to our Responsible Care membership, we hold ISO 14001, ISO 50001 and OHSAS 18001 certifications. Could you share your thoughts on Turkey's building chemicals sector? What do you see as Turkey's advantages and disadvantages? Turkey's scale in construction is well known to everyone. However, an important matter worth mentioning is that construction quality is also improving. Building coatings and chemicals that can withstand earthquakes, water attacks and other conditions for longer periods, with extended service lives, are becoming increasingly common in parallel with growing consumer awareness. This can also be observed from the increase in polymer consumption in Turkey. Powder polymer consumption, accepted as a direct indicator of building chemicals quality, more than doubled in Turkey over the past 10 years. This ratio is encouraging in that it greatly exceeds the increase in total construction spending. On the other hand, particularly when compared to Western European countries, it is clear that we still have much ground to cover as a nation. For example, the amount of powder polymer used per square meter in ceramic applications is approximately 5 times higher in Germany than in Turkey. Similar numerical comparisons emerge in thermal insulation system applications. The difference in polymer usage rates in waterproofing applications is much greater. Given this situation, we must state that in our country these applications, which are of vital importance for construction quality, have a proportionally shorter service life. As Organik Kimya, within our R&D Center we do our best so that synthesis and application laboratories serving only the Building Solutions business unit provide as much benefit as possible to our nation's construction market. We are pleased to think that through work conducted in our laboratories, to which we have opened our doors and facilities fully to our customers, we have contributed to awareness regarding the improvement in construction quality that has occurred in recent years.

Does Organik Kimya have investment plans for the coming periods, and if so, what are they?

At the start of 2017 we completed a major investment in our acrylic polymer emulsion capacity at our Rotterdam plant in the Netherlands, bringing us to an annual production capacity of 100,000 tons, and in the same manner we began work last year on our second spray dryer investment in Tuzla that will come online in 2020. With the startup of this facility, we aim to become significantly stronger globally with our total powder polymer capacity reaching 40,000 tons. The increase in our production capacity and brand visibility in the sector naturally attracts the attention of global and regional formations, and we become part of them; most recently at the start of this year we began serving actively on the board of EFCC (European Federation of Construction Chemicals), a Belgium-based association.