Ahmet Karamustafaoğlu of Asil Kimya answered our questions.

Asil Kimya, marking 30 years in the paints sector, has opened up to our questions through its Founder and Board Chairman Ahmet Karamustafaoğlu, who spoke candidly about product ranges, R&D activities, distinguishing features that set them apart from competitors, and future targets and projects.

Could you briefly tell our readers about yourself, your educational background and professional experience?

I was born in Beylerbeyi, Istanbul in 1958. I spent my childhood and youth in Beylerbeyi as well. After secondary school, I was always involved in commerce. After gaining various experiences, I founded Asil Kimya in 1987 and entered the trading business directly. How long have you been serving the paints sector? Could you outline the development of your company since its establishment for our readers? We are celebrating our 30th year in the paints sector. Asil Kimya was founded in 1987. In our early years, we solely supplied paint raw materials. Through important business partnerships we established with European companies, we quickly made a name for ourselves. Over the years, we began supplying new products in different sectors and continued to grow on a sectoral basis. In the last 10 years, we have set our sights on the Far East market and begun developing our own brands. Our current product portfolio includes many companies from Europe, China and Korea. Our customers have begun showing increasing interest in this diverse portfolio of ours as time goes on. In the paints sector, we have worked with many companies since our establishment and continue to do so. Over 30 years, we have managed to forge a special bond with our customers. Our philosophy now remains to continually seek the best service we can provide.

Could you tell us about Asil Kimya's vision?

Our vision is to be a global organization that makes a difference in chemical raw material supply. To elaborate: our aim as Asil Kimya is to undertake initiatives that will represent our country in the finest way on the international stage and achieve healthy growth. To accomplish this, just as we have done so far, we have set ourselves the goal of being our customers' first choice with pioneering and competitive approaches and gaining lasting competitive advantages against our rivals. Our philosophy as Asil Kimya is to always remain in pursuit of providing the best service. As everything changes so rapidly in the world, I believe we too need to have a flexible outlook and the ability to make quick decisions when necessary. Both personally and as employees, we greet all new perspectives and opportunities—whether product or sector-based—with great open-mindedness and are not afraid to embrace innovation. In this way, as Asil Kimya, we have created a beautiful synergy arising from participatory strength, and this synergy has assumed an important place in our company culture and decision-making mechanism. With our employees who share common values and are focused on our goals, our core values that make us who we are, and our 30 years of experience, we are fully confident that we will realize our vision. Could you provide information about your product groups and the sectors you serve? As Asil Kimya, we supply virtually all water and solvent-based paint raw materials. To categorize them, some of the groups we supply include titanium dioxide, organic-inorganic pigments, additives and agents, cellulose, micronized products and resins. Beyond the paints sector, we serve 14 different sectors including construction chemicals, plastics, textiles and leather.

Could you tell us about your R&D activities and investments? What are your priority objectives in R&D work?

We have greatly developed ourselves in recent years in R&D and made major strides. Our technical team conducts continuous work in our fully equipped R&D center in Tuzla. We are working on many projects together with our R&D center and our Shanghai supply office that we have put into operation. Our work consists of two divisions. The first is standardizing the existing products we supply. That is, carrying out quality control to ensure products always maintain the same quality. Our second division involves testing new and alternative products. With the idea of better and newer products, we are always in pursuit of higher-quality products for our product portfolio. Particularly in recent years, we have greatly developed ourselves in this area. Currently, in our laboratory, we test new or alternative products every week and continue our work on higher-quality and more economical products. How do you determine new products to be added to your product range? We identify market needs based on reports provided by our employees. As I mentioned, we have a dynamic structure in this regard and can launch a project immediately. Based on our purchasing department's work, we contact our Far East, European or other supply points. We can immediately begin work on products in the portfolio of our European business partners. In the Far East, our supply office in Shanghai is very important for accelerating these processes and obtaining more reliable results. After quality control of samples is carried out in our R&D center, we make the necessary modifications and bring the most suitable product to market.

In your view, why do companies prefer your company?

I believe the answer to this question is, first and foremost, the trust our customers have in us. For thirty years, we have had a very special relationship based on honesty with our customers. Second, the width of our product portfolio and our ability to offer many alternatives. We currently have the widest product range in the paints sector. Besides this, we can offer customers different products for the same item—some more economical, others of higher quality. In addition to high-quality products, we are pleased by the interest in more economical products that can take the place of quality products. In improving the quality of these products, with the contribution of our own R&D unit, we are moving to better products each day and can carry out product modifications according to our customers' wishes. The third reason is our extensive logistics network. In addition to Istanbul's Anatolian and European warehouses, our regional offices and warehouses in Ankara, Izmir, Konya and Bursa serve our customers. We can provide immediate service to our customers even for their smallest needs. This is also one of our important differences compared to our competitors.

Given that our life resources are now under threat, the need for environmental measures has become even more pressing. What initiatives do you have in this regard? What are you doing to work toward a sustainable future?

We all have responsibilities to leave a cleaner and more livable world for future generations. I believe we are fulfilling our duty in this regard. At Asil Kimya, we operate based on international standards and management systems. We pay attention to forming partnerships with production centers that use more efficient and new technologies. To prevent environmental impacts such as waste generation, we work together with environmental consultants.

How was the first quarter of 2017 for your company? Could we learn about your targets and projects for 2017?

This year we have aggressively increased our targets. Nevertheless, thank goodness, everything has gone as planned so far. In 2017, we increased our export targets more than in previous years. In the coming period, we will carry out more comprehensive work in the export area. As we do every year, in 2017 we will add new products to our portfolio for the paints and other sectors. We are working on many products that are more economical in financial terms but of high quality. As I mentioned before, ensuring standardization of these products is truly difficult work. We are gaining a significant advantage in this regard with our supply office in Shanghai and our employees. Even though our market initially had some prejudice against Far Eastern products, we have conducted work to eliminate these biases. We carry out quality control of all products we import through our supply office before product loading. I believe this investment we have made is an important and exemplary initiative. The products we currently supply create optimal solutions for our customers in terms of quality and price. Our goal is to further develop ourselves in this regard and take customer satisfaction to more advanced levels.

Do you have a message you wish to convey to the sector?

Although our country is going through a difficult period economically, I believe our nation's potential is very large and at a level to overcome difficulties. If we work more and produce more, if we can focus on high value-added products, if we give more emphasis to exports and use technology more effectively, I believe we can take our sector and our country's prosperity to much greater heights.