Interview with Abdullah Kamil Kural, General Manager of Cosmer Kimya

We conducted an interview with Abdullah Kamil Kural, General Director of Cosmer Kimya, discussing the company's areas of operation, R&D activities and product range.

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

I was born in Istanbul in 1980 and am the father of three children. As a result of a special interest in chemistry that dates back to my high school years, in 1998 I enrolled in the English Chemistry department at Abant İzzet Baysal University. I married during my university years and began trading at the same time, so my business career started while I was still a student. Based on the principle that loving the work you do is one of the greatest drivers of success, after graduation I decided to begin my professional career in the chemical raw materials sales sector, where I could utilize all of my skills including foreign language proficiency, commercial expertise and chemistry knowledge. I worked in various positions at leading firms in the raw materials sector. I have been in the raw materials sector for approximately 16 years. For the past 8 years, I have served as General Director at Cosmer Kimya.

Could you provide information about Cosmer Kimya? What activities do you conduct both globally and throughout Turkey?

Cosmer Kimya, as one of the companies of Mercan Kimya Group, is a rare firm that began operations in 1977 under the leadership of founder Gültekin Okay Salgar during the early development stages of the Turkish Chemical Industry and made significant contributions to the development of the Turkish chemical sector, and quickly adopted a corporate management structure. Starting operations in 2012 as a raw materials supplier in the detergent, cosmetics and industrial chemicals sectors, Cosmer Kimya, with its young and dynamic professional team, serves the sector as a raw materials supplier, primarily in cosmetics, detergents and industrial chemicals, with the focus and motivation to contribute to the Turkish chemical sector as required by our mission, with the support of our global partners worldwide. In addition to raw materials supply, our company provides services to our customers through our advanced R&D laboratory and our experienced expert staff in many areas such as innovation studies, innovative product analysis, CTI testing, stability test phases, formula cost reduction studies, etc., and in the second pillar of R&D, we create production process diagrams and subsequently provide full support by accompanying our customers' initial trial production runs.

What are your product varieties? According to which criteria do you determine your domestic and foreign sales volumes?

A large portion of our portfolio consists of industrial, cosmetics, pharmaceutical, fragrance and detergent chemicals, as well as packaging materials needed by the sector such as specialty perfume bottles, triggers and pumps. Beyond these, we also operate in areas such as food, pool chemicals, building chemicals, textiles, agriculture and animal husbandry, and we are developing rapidly in these areas as well. With the awareness that every cent we can bring to our country is important in terms of foreign exchange inflow, we place emphasis on exports. In this context, our presence in foreign markets is growing rapidly, and we strive to ensure that the customers we serve domestically have access to the right chemicals and correct products, are quickly informed of innovations, and thus help the sector produce branded values that are recognized abroad.

Could you tell us about the work carried out in your application laboratory? Why is the application laboratory important for Cosmer Kimya?

We believe that chemical raw materials trading is a very specialized business that must be conducted with great care. Chemical trading, like many other sectors, does not consist of a uniform product range, but is a field where the sale of very special commodities takes place that require serious scientific approach, innovation and R&D monitoring behind them. The infrastructure upon which such a business can be built must rest on very solid foundations. We have carefully organized this foundation with R&D, quality control, sales and marketing organization, logistics storage operations, accounting and finance, and import and export organization staffed by professional personnel. R&D is very important at the foundation of our business, because the materials we sell are chemical. They are not products that everyone can understand, examine or measure in quality. We have made it our mission as a company to provide our customers with raw materials we are confident in, that will not cause problems in their production, and that will bring them added value. Given this situation, we view the importance we give to R&D as a foundation that other departments will be built upon. We place technical approach, quality control, selection of correct raw materials and creation of correct formulations at the base of this business.

What future do you expect for the cosmetics and personal care sector in the coming years? Could you tell us about the actions you have taken as Cosmer Kimya to monitor and implement these innovations?

Cosmetics is one of the sectors that grows exponentially each year and where innovation is continuous and wide open. In terms of product variety, we expect an increase in natural, vegan, halal, ecocert-certified products and a shift towards dermocosmetica in coming years, and we are focused on providing the necessary raw materials to our customers to produce these types of products. Producing the right product may not lead to reaching the right markets; on the other hand, since world trade has evolved into a digitalized platform, I believe that cosmetics manufacturers need to move their products to platforms that consumers can easily access. I think that companies that cannot complete the digitalization process in every sector will not find a place for themselves in the market in the future.

Could you tell us about the corporate social responsibility projects you have implemented?

We provide very serious R&D support to the education and production processes conducted in the Chemistry departments of vocational high schools. Within the scope of this project, without charging any R&D service fees, we provide both training to our schools and conduct formula studies. In this context, we have education and training protocols with certain schools. Our aim here is to contribute to our schools in training conscious, relatively sector-prepared intermediate personnel and chemists.

How do you evaluate the impact of the Covid-19 process on the cosmetics and personal care sector? What activities did your company conduct during this period?

Covid-19 is one of the greatest disasters our generation has witnessed. I hope this process will be quickly overcome through the intensive efforts of all scientists. In such global disasters, we observed that consumption of health, food, hygiene and cleaning products accelerates, and supply chain disruptions in these areas can cause difficult days and anxiety for society. Specifically during the Covid-19 pandemic, we increased our capacity and operational capability to ensure that there was no disruption in the provision of raw materials needed to ensure that hygiene and cleaning materials reached our people, and we made great efforts to ensure there was no interruption. As Cosmer Kimya, we are taking the necessary actions for this period and keeping pace with the digitalization process through innovative approaches. In this context, we are effectively using social media platforms and organizing online training and information seminars.