Agora Kimya Grubu: A 43-Year Legacy in Hygiene

Report by: Gamze Ünal

Bengüsu Eyiel Ayabakan and Bora Eyiel, the current managers of Agora Kimya, described the company's characteristics.

Founded in 1982, Agora Kimya Group has transformed from raw material trading to a leading chemical manufacturer for pool maintenance, water treatment and personal hygiene under brands such as WTR and SOOP. Headquartered in Izmir, the group also distributes international products in Turkey. Through its commitment to innovation, sustainability and quality, it adapts to market trends, invests in R&D, and trains sector professionals through Agora Kimya Academy.

Could you introduce Agora Kimya Group and yourselves to our readers?
As Agora Kimya Group, we are a company with 43 years of history. In 1982, we started with raw material trading as İzmir Selen Kimya, and subsequently founded Agora Kimya in 2006 to begin manufacturing operations. Within Agora Kimya, we produce pool chemicals, water conditioning, drinking and utility water, food hygiene and sanitation, medical hygiene and sanitation, outdoor use, personal care and household cleaning products.

Under our umbrella, we house high-profile sector brands including WTR, Selenoid, Handdes, Alesdes, Pereko, SOOP, and Greengel. With our 80-person team, we also provide contract manufacturing for leading domestic and international brands in the sector. Additionally, we import product lines to support our manufactured products and handle Turkey distributorship for BS Pool, LaMotte, PoolSan, and Plastiflex brands. İzmir Selen Kimya, our group's first company, is the company that initiated our 42-year journey.

İzmir Selen Kimya primarily supplies raw materials to manufacturers in the Aegean Region through distribution and imports, and holds high sector recognition as the main driving force behind the group's success to date. Currently operating as the group's sales company, it handles raw material and finished product sales, and all of our e-commerce operations also continue within this company. As the second generation, we are working with all our strength to take the torch we inherited further forward.

Bora Eyiel: After İzmir Saint Joseph High School, I studied Public and International Relations. Following two years of sales experience in an international company, I joined the family business that has been part of me since childhood. I have been actively working at Agora Kimya since 2002. I led the initiative to begin manufacturing operations, and have been managing Agora Kimya since 2006. Following my father's and partner's retirement after the pandemic, we undertook structural changes, consolidating our companies under the Agora Kimya Group umbrella, optimizing our resources and redirecting ourselves toward a more efficient and corporate structure. With our production and R&D team composed entirely of chemists and chemical engineers, we continue to develop products in line with trends and to improve ourselves.

Bengüsu Eyiel Ayabakan: After İzmir Bornova Anatolian High School, I studied business administration. My professional career, which began with internship during university, has spanned approximately 19 years. I held management positions primarily in strategy, sales and marketing in Turkey and abroad. I joined the family business approximately 7 years ago. Together with my brother, we are working to take the companies further by blending the torch we inherited with our acquired experience.

Agora Kimya has a broad product range extending from pool chemicals to personal care products. Your product portfolio contains solutions targeting both industrial and consumer markets. What strategies do you use to effectively address these different segments?

Our most important strategy is to accept that the only constant is change, and to prepare ourselves accordingly both as a product and as an organization. To keep pace with change, you need to continuously improve yourself. In an environment where competition is constantly increasing, if you do not renew and improve yourself, you are destined to shrink and disappear.

We are very aware of this and have planned all our strategies accordingly. Most importantly, you need to be informed—we closely monitor what is happening in the sector and consumer side, what the trends are. Our age is the age of technology, and we think hard about how we can better utilize technology in our own business and optimize our operations to create a more effective and profitable working environment. We continuously allocate resources for our R&D department and develop products in line with consumer demands. At every step of production, we place people, human health and the environment first, making it our principle to produce high value-added, innovative products—these principles are our most important must-haves.

Your company places emphasis on using the highest quality raw materials. What process is followed to procure these materials and ensure their quality?

When we look at the definition of a quality product, it is defined as follows: Quality consists of knowing consumer needs and expectations; designing products suitable to these needs; producing them without errors; reliably sourcing the product's components and raw materials and sub-components; documenting performance and safety; clearly presenting certain characteristics related to use; properly packaging; timely delivery; providing after-sales service; and all experiences related to these matters.

This is an excellent definition, and at Agora Kimya we conduct our manufacturing within the framework of the quality policy we have created for each of these processes. The process beginning with raw materials arriving at our factory, undergoing necessary analyses and being accepted by the factory, continues with the same diligence through production, filling, packaging and boxing stages. We control and oversee the process using our e-flow system. While our quality department checks the appropriateness of our quality standards through internal audits, we continuously improve ourselves by adding new quality assurance criteria in relevant areas. We perform contract manufacturing for domestic and international brands, and they conduct audits at certain intervals, which keeps us current and enables us to improve continuously.

Agora Kimya's approach includes a focus on sustainability. Could you detail how sustainability is integrated into your product development and business operations?

We have been a player in the chemical sector for 42 years, and it is quite important for us to be sustainable and pass our business from one generation to the next. Within this, the most important elements are how you conduct your business, your principles and values, your brands, your ability to correctly read your consumer, trends, regulations, laws, and most importantly your team. You need to transfer knowledge and experience and make it continuous. In parallel with this, you must conduct your operations without harming nature while producing your products, and ensure that the products you produce, while meeting consumer expectations, are also respectful to nature and the environment.

Within this framework, working with the right suppliers, determining your production processes accordingly, making long-term plans and setting up your system correctly makes you sustainable. We frequently review our product groups in line with developing technology and new raw materials. Reducing packaging consumption, producing more environmentally conscious products, and taking steps to reduce carbon emissions are always on our agenda. Recently, with 3 new products we launched, we converted liquid products into tablet form, thereby reducing plastic consumption and lowering shipping weight to reduce carbon emissions. Additionally, SOOP, our natural cleaning product brand in our product portfolio, is produced from entirely naturally sourced raw materials using vegan formulations. This product family that directly reaches end consumers offers healthier and safer cleaning. Our brand, categorized as SOOP Baby, SOOP Home, SOOP Hand and SOOP Cosmetics, is one of our fastest-growing product groups.

Agora Kimya Academy offers training programs for business partners. What types of training does Agora Kimya provide and how do these trainings benefit the sector?

If a job is being done, we favor having it done by skilled hands. After all, the products used to clean and maintain pools are definitely products that must be applied correctly and adequately. We are a manufacturer, and our products reach consumers through our distributors. We created Agora Kimya Academy to ensure that our distributors and their teams have knowledge about our products and their application, and receive certain trainings. We provide trainings to our distributors and teams at periodic intervals regarding pools, pool maintenance and the products used. Our distributors can reach us 24/7 whenever they get stuck on any point, and our technical team tries to assist them in all matters. Beyond this, we work together with Public Education Centers on "swimming pool operators trainings," which we are pioneering in our sector. To date, we have signed joint training agreements with Public Education Centers in various cities. It is very important that the entire sector understands the importance of this matter and provides support.

Your R&D Laboratory appears to be very important in keeping the company innovative. Can you explain some recent innovations or breakthroughs emerging from this laboratory?

The period we are in is an age of speed and technology, which has taken us to a completely different place. In parallel with this, consumer expectations and demands are changing. We very closely follow consumer trends and love to think about what we can do in our own field. We initiate R&D work in areas we have identified. R&D is a long process requiring research, and of course allocating resources to this area is also very important. We invest annually in R&D for 2-3 products. Where necessary, we receive support from business partners we work with, bringing them together with our R&D teams to exchange views on products. R&D is very enjoyable but requires great effort and patience—it is the most important unit that will move you forward, which is why we will continue to invest regularly in R&D.

Especially in light of global health concerns, how do you think Agora Kimya plays a role in improving public health through your medical hygiene and disinfectant products?

It is important to define disinfectant correctly. To call a product a disinfectant, you must hold a biocidal authorization. The viruses, bacteria and fungi that your manufactured disinfectant is effective against must be determined through analyses conducted by independent laboratories. After passing these analyses, your product receives biocidal authorization and you can begin sales. For this reason, we recommend that consumers always check whether a disinfectant has biocidal authorization when purchasing.

During the pandemic period, we manufactured all disinfectants for the İzmir Provincial Health Directorate and the İzmir Region. While when people in Turkey say disinfectant, they generally put imported products and international brands in the foreground, we as a domestic manufacturer were able to enter leading hospitals in our country with our products on a corporate basis. We think this is very important for our country's economy. When you do your job correctly, success follows—we believe in this, and as a result we perform contract manufacturing of disinfectant products for international brands operating in Turkey and are one of a brand's global suppliers.