Interview with Onur Kipri, General Manager of Akkim Kimya

We conducted a detailed and enjoyable conversation with Onur Kipri, General Director of Akkim Kimya, about the company's objectives. Kipri discussed the company's R&D activities and its perspective on sustainability. [caption id="attachment_127094" align="aligncenter"] Onur Kipri[/caption]

Could you tell our readers about yourself and your professional background?

I was born in Adana in 1964. I graduated from Boğaziçi University Business Faculty in 1986. I have worked as a manager in the chemical industry for exactly 30 years. In addition to being General Director and Board Member of Akkim Kimya, I continue my professional career as a member of the Executive Board of Akkök Holding. I am married with two children. In my free time, one of my passions that brings me the greatest pleasure is sailing. In 2010, I purchased a cruising-class sailing yacht and began spending most of my holidays sailing with my family in the south. Additionally, four years ago we founded the Akkim Sailing Team with our employees at Akkim, and we began competing in the IRC-2 class. Last year, our team became the overall champion at the TAYK Trophy and is maintaining first place in its class in the 2021 season. We are pleased to have just completed the East Aegean Sailing Week held on 9-17 July as the overall champion once again.

Could you provide information about the sectors you serve and your product range?

Akkim has a very broad production portfolio and through our product diversity, we are positioned in a special place in the chemical industry. We fill a competitive position among a small number of manufacturers in Turkey and Europe. Speaking of the sectors we serve, we can mention cleaning, hygiene, water treatment, textiles, paper, construction chemicals, plastics, food, metal, energy, and chemicals. Nearly all of the products we manufacture are raw materials for consumer products that enter our daily lives. Therefore, although we are not visible under the Akkim brand, we are actually improving consumers' quality of life in their everyday lives. We are market leaders in many products in basic chemicals and performance chemicals. We have an extremely broad product range including chlorine alkali and its derivatives, peroxides, methylamines, persulfates, bisulfites, textile auxiliaries, concrete admixtures, and plastic additives. Together with our subsidiaries, we have a total annual production capacity of 840,000 tons. At the same time, we are the sole manufacturer in our country and region of ultrafiltration membranes used for advanced water treatment technologies. In addition, we export the know-how and technologies we possess, providing many different services ranging from engineering work to turnkey projects. We also undertake the operation and maintenance of the units we design when requested. Being able to touch people's lives around the world with the products we develop, to respond to their needs, to improve living conditions—this excites us as Akkim.

At the beginning of the year, Akkim Kimya made a major investment by acquiring USK Kimya, Turkey's leading carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) manufacturer. Could you provide information about this investment's contribution to Akkim Kimya and Turkey?

Company acquisition opportunities, both domestically and abroad, are always on our agenda. Inorganic investments are critical to our strategic growth objectives. As you mentioned, we incorporated USK Kimya, one of Turkey's and the world's leading carboxymethyl cellulose manufacturers, into the Akkim group with an investment of USD 63 million. Through this, we made investments targeted at the detergent, drilling, mining, and food sectors. When making this investment decision, we considered USK's strong export capability, its clear market dominance domestically, and its know-how capability. The fact that the customer portfolio of USK Kimya aligns with the sectors we serve, and the synergies that emerge in production processes and supply chain stages, have already begun to add value to us. With USK Kimya included, the resources we have allocated to company acquisitions over the past 6 years has reached USD 200 million. In 2015, we incorporated Akcoat, one of the world's leading manufacturers of enamel and ceramic frits, into our group, entering the high-performance enamel and ceramic coatings and white goods, kitchenware, and ceramic markets. In 2017, we acquired Dinox, a German-based chemical sales and marketing company, bringing us closer to Europe, one of our priority export markets. Meanwhile, our subsidiary Akcoat made an important integration investment by acquiring Megacolor, a Spanish manufacturer of ceramic printing inks. As we embark on new investments, our employment levels and production capacity continue to increase.

Could you tell us about your domestic and international sales volume?

When we consider performance and basic chemicals together, we can say that Akkim is among the largest players in the domestic market. Through our exports to more than 70 countries across 6 continents, we hold strategic importance in the country's economy in this area. In 2020, together with our subsidiaries, we achieved exports exceeding USD 100 million, adding value to Turkey during a difficult year caused by the pandemic. With USK Kimya joining our group, we increased the share of our exports in our revenue to above 35 percent. Together with all our subsidiaries and inorganic acquisition investments, we have set a target to increase our exports by at least double within the next 5 years and increase our revenue to USD 500 million annually. We are also developing local organizations in markets such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Egypt, which are considered major production centers for the textile sector in the world. What is the importance of R&D for Akkim Kimya? Could you tell us about the R&D projects you have conducted recently? R&D is one of the areas to which we attach the most importance. With the aim of adding value to life through chemistry and providing dynamic solution partnerships for our stakeholders, R&D and Innovation are indispensable to us. While prioritizing our business partners' expectations, through our R&D capabilities, we correctly analyze our customers' needs and examine them from technical and commercial perspectives. With the belief that our customers' successes are our successes, we develop innovative ideas into projects and prepare them for use. In our R&D center, established in an area of 2,700 square meters and accredited by the Turkish Ministry of Industry and Technology, we develop innovative chemical products for national and international industrial organizations. In our advanced-technology-equipped laboratories, our work continues across a fairly broad spectrum. Last year, we invested close to TRY 15 million in R&D, achieving status as one of Turkey's companies investing most in and producing projects in this area. We have 37 international patent applications. We continue R&D work with approximately 40 specialist employees holding doctorate and master's degrees in different disciplines.

Could you discuss the importance of the "Innovation Week" events, which started in 2016 and are organized periodically each year, for innovation competency and perspective?

Innovation is essential to our business. Through the innovation project we launched 5 years ago, we aimed to transform our organizational culture into a structure that embraces and supports innovation. To ensure that "innovation," one of our values, finds a place in our organization, we planned to create a common language by organizing innovation training for all our employees, starting from managers, because we believe that innovation is essentially a way of life. In our view, the expected result from innovative activities does not always have to be an invention. Sometimes adding value to existing systems, products, or processes, or creating material benefits for the organization, can also be part of innovation. With this perspective, to make innovation part of organizational culture and create a structure that can pass this culture on to future generations, we are conducting many systematic and actionable studies. To weigh and develop our innovation competency, we celebrate a week that we predetermine each year as "Innovation Week." To create a suitable environment for developing new ideas and products, we operate an "Innovation Award" program for our employees. This award both increases motivation and encourages a spirit of friendly competition, contributing to Akkim and the chemical industry. In our "Idea Workshop" program, which carries the motto "Those who do the work know it best," which we have maintained since 2015, we collect and evaluate suggestions from our employees that add value to our culture. Additionally, in the last quarter of 2020, we launched a culture project called "Innovation Ambassadorship," which we have targeted for the sustainability of innovation culture and which has planned actions through the end of 2022. With a team of 15 ambassadors, we continue to develop project details and shape the process under the leadership of senior management. The ambassadors were selected to represent each directorate. Being inclusive and understandable is quite important. We meet each month to discuss developments in our action plans. Once the process steps are clarified, we plan to go into the field to scale it.

What measures have you taken while producing for a more sustainable world? In this context, how would you define Akkim Kimya's perspective on sustainability?

The message we give to our stakeholders on this matter is: "Sustainability is in our chemistry." Sustainability is now one of the most important concepts of our time, and to be sustainable, we must develop eco-friendly green products. For such needs, healthier, safer, and biodegradable sustainable products are in high demand. Our mission of "adding value to life through chemistry" constantly reminds us and guides us that chemistry is present in every aspect of life. In the R&D we discussed earlier, we conduct all our work according to our customers' and end users' needs. At Akkim, we manage our R&D projects through a globally accepted system called "Stage & Gate." When developing the product formulation, legal compliance processes, risk assessments of possible effects on the environment and human health are reviewed through interdisciplinary discussions. We understand the philosophy of green chemistry as the design of processes for the use and manufacture of substances that will not harm the natural environment and human health. Providing examples of our eco-friendly products developed for the sectors we serve: the use of environmentally friendly hydrogen peroxide-based products instead of chlorine-based cleaning products, the use of peroxide instead of chlorine in water treatment, the use of soya oil and peroxide-based products in the plastics sector, the use of sodium percarbonate, which is more environmentally friendly than additives with low water solubility and high water pollution load, and the treatment of scrap iron and waste acid for use as coagulants in the water treatment sector. Preference for products containing fewer toxic substances and volatile organic compounds in textiles, the use of new-generation resins in the toilet paper sector, in water treatment; the use of less chemicals, the use of ultrafiltration membranes to increase efficiency, less wastewater discharge and less fresh water consumption in textile production sector wastewater, and the use of alkali-free concrete admixtures free from the toxic effects of harmful chemicals that could be inhaled in closed environments such as tunnels in construction chemicals are projects we can list. Since 1993, we have been signatories to the Responsible Care Program conducted by the European Chemical Industry Council, and from 2007 to the present, we are signatories to the United Nations Global Compact. Every two years, we publish a sustainability report in accordance with Global Reporting Initiative standards and transparently communicate our performance in this area to the public. Our 2018-2019 report was awarded the Platinum Award in the 2019/20 Vision Awards organized by the League of American Communications Professionals (LACP), which is considered one of the world's most respected communications organizations. In the global supply chain corporate social responsibility sustainability assessment conducted by EcoVadis, which includes approximately 75,000 companies across more than 200 industries in over 160 countries, we elevated our recognition level from Silver to Gold. With our environmental, social, ethical, and sustainable procurement performance, we have risen from the best 22 percent of suppliers across all categories to the top 3 percent. Our 2021 target is to rank in the top 1 percent. In February 2020, we became a Bluesign System Partner. Finally, we completed the level 3 audit of the ZDHC (Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals) program, which evaluates the sustainability of textile chemicals, achieving the highest score in Turkey. With our awareness of responsible production and consumption, we once again proved that we are a reliable manufacturer. In line with sustainable development goals, we plan to construct a living product index in economic growth, calculate our water footprint in the environmental dimension, and develop an occupational health and safety culture in the social dimension. As a measure of the value we create in the circular economy, we have earned the right to obtain the Zero Waste Certificate.

What innovations will you present to the sector in the coming days? How would you evaluate the advantages these innovations will bring to your company, the chemical industry, and our country?

During the pandemic period we have been in for quite some time, naturally, as might be expected, demand for hygiene and cleaning products increased first. With the progress of community vaccination efforts, although an important period has been entered, we foresee that intense demand for hygiene products will continue for a long time. Interest in anti-bacterial products, especially from both end consumers and manufacturers, remains at consistently high levels. We have also increased the weight we give to anti-bacterial work in our R&D center. Additionally, the importance of healthy water use for public health has come to the forefront once again. During this period, the water chemical needs of our country's municipal water supply facilities, especially those of our three major cities, are being met by Akkim in accordance with global quality standards. With the mucilage problem that emerged in the Marmara Sea, demand for Ultrafiltration Membrane Water Filters, which have the ability to filter bacteria and viruses and of which Akkim is the sole manufacturer in our country and geography, has increased. As is known, the mucilage problem stems from the disruption of the nitrogen and phosphorus balance in the sea. The removal of nitrogen and phosphorus from wastewater has become critically important in this regard, and these removals can only be achieved through biological and chemical treatment. To meet the increased demand, we have accelerated the capacity increase we planned and continue to fully respond to the demands of both the community and industry.