Interview with Turan Cihanoğlu, Deputy General Manager of Sales and Marketing at Dinçer Lojistik

We conducted an engaging interview with Turan Cihanoğlu, Sales and Marketing Deputy General Manager of Dinçer Lojistik. Cihanoğlu discussed the products and services of Dinçer Lojistik.

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

I was born in Istanbul in 1969, I am married and have two children, one son and one daughter. I completed my university education in the Department of Economics at Anadolu University. For more than 25 years, I have worked in the paints and logistics sectors, serving in many departments including Sales and Marketing, Customer Relations, Warehouse Management, and Business Development.

Could you provide information about Dinçer Lojistik's founding process and current structure?

While being the youngest and most innovative company in the sector, we have been operating in accordance with our strategic plan for more than 15 years, providing customized solutions to our customers in the chemical industry and filling an important gap in the packaged chemical transportation sector with our own and contract vehicle fleet that complies with ADR standards and our drivers holding SRC5 licenses. In this context, all personnel, facilities, vehicles and certification equipment have been designed to serve the chemical sector. We currently serve our customers with 11 transfer centers selected considering Turkey's commercial flow, regional and dedicated warehouses operating in 15 different provinces and 21 different locations, our vehicle fleet complying with ADR standards, and our 450 employees, and we are the logistics service provider in Turkey for many national and international companies.

Which sectors does Dinçer Lojistik mainly serve?

Our company, established in 2003, has placed the chemical sector at the core of its strategic plan and is one of the most important service providers for many sectors including paints and chemicals, construction, mineral oils, packaging, industrial products and automotive suppliers.

Could you provide information about Dinçer Lojistik's products and services?

We design our services, which we classify under three main headings—storage, distribution and value-added services—entirely in accordance with customer needs and standards. In the field of storage, we provide effective storage services to our customers through our 21 regional and dedicated warehouses with a capacity of 97,500 pallets built on an area of 65,000 m2 and distributed throughout the country. Additionally, through our Hazardous Materials Warehouse commissioned in 2016 in the Dilovası region, which is strategically positioned due to its proximity to ports and container terminals and is known as the capital of the chemical sector, we provide services particularly for flammable (Class 3) products. Our warehouse is built on an 8,000 m2 area with a capacity of 12,000 pallets and is fully equipped in accordance with SQAS and NFPA standards. In the field of transportation, we serve our customers across a wide range of services including partial shipments, ADR partial shipments, groupage, FTL, multi-point FTL, FTL and partial shipments from different provinces, container transportation and dealer logistics. Among our customers are producers of raw materials and semi-finished products as well as companies engaged in their trade. While all our customers are high-profile branded companies, we have a customer portfolio that expects the services we provide to be of high standards. This places a high standardization responsibility on us in all our processes, and our customer companies cannot accept any deviation from this. Multinational companies in particular make significant positive contributions to our processes.

Could you briefly provide information about your R&D department?

We began preparations for our R&D center at the end of 2017 and established it at the beginning of March 2018, becoming Kocaeli's 100th R&D center in this process. While conducting our activities in the Turkish market, we work with the goal of creating differentiation against our competitors, developing new solutions and new types of services for the logistics sector, and creating process and organizational innovation. We have started work on a total of 11 projects, including the GoAgro Vas, GoAgro WMS, GoAgro TMS, GoHappyCustomer and GoChemWMS projects. Thanks to our R&D center where innovation and digitalization efforts will be carried out, we aim to increase our sales and provide cost advantages to our customers. With the R&D center we established, we have brought together our knowledge accumulated in chemical logistics and our experienced human resources under one roof, starting with a team of 20 people in the initial phase, and our R&D staff has now reached 32, and we plan to increase this number to 45 by the end of the year.

Could you tell us about your Dealer Logistics project?

With the Dealer Logistics project that we launched in mid-2017, we serve our customers particularly in the paints and mineral oils sectors, and in May we shook hands with 2 more different customers to start the project. Through the Dealer Logistics project, we provide our customers with opportunities and services that increase sales, such as spreading logistics activities managed from a single center to regional levels, conducting transportation and storage processes of both service-receiving companies and distributor dealers together, minimizing storage and distribution costs, delivering products to sales and consumption points as quickly as possible, and reducing costs through consolidation opportunities for ADR-related costs that cause significant increases in the costs of chemical sector manufacturers. We have completed the first phase of the project and investments of approximately TRY 25 million in warehouses and vehicles. We are currently working on sub-projects such as digital solutions, real-time data flow, real-time tracking of dispatch information, e-archive and similar initiatives that form the second phase of the project with support from our R&D department.

"Dinçer Lojistik General Manager Mustafa Dinçer received his plaque from Kocaeli Governor Hüseyin Aksoy in recognition of being Kocaeli's 100th R&D Center."

Could you briefly tell us about your 2018 investments?

As part of the e-Commerce Logistics Project that we started at the beginning of 2018, we made a fleet investment of 100 vehicles and within this project alone, we plan to make an additional investment of 200 vehicles by the end of the year. 2018 has been a very active and intensive year for us thanks to our R&D investments, Dealer Logistics Project investments and e-Commerce Logistics Project investments. We aim to complete these investments by the end of the year and begin reaping their benefits.