We Conducted an Interview with Fırat Sağlam

We conducted a pleasant interview with Fırat Sağlam, General Manager of Bühler Türkiye, on the company's areas of operation, R&D activities and corporate policies.

Could you tell us about yourself and your professional background in the sector?

I was born in Ankara in 1984. After completing my Chemical Engineering degree, I worked in Sales and Process Engineering roles at various companies in the United States and Turkey before joining Bühler Türkiye in 2013. Throughout my career at Bühler, I worked in the grinding and dispersion field, initially in Turkey, then in Iran, Pakistan, and most recently across the entire Middle East and Africa region in sales and business development roles. In 2020, I was appointed Sales Director at Bühler Türkiye, responsible for all business units. During this period, I earned my MBA from Boğaziçi University and completed a one-year management development program at Ashridge Hult Business School in England as part of Bühler's Global Executive Development Program. Eventually, in 2021, I assumed the position of General Manager of Bühler Türkiye, a role I continue to hold today.

Could you tell us about Bühler Türkiye's success story from its founding to today?

Bühler began its operations in these lands following the invention of the first complete mill machinery in 1890 and the installation of the first machine in Edirne in 1903. Bühler machinery was used in Afyon in the 1920s and later in Bursa in the 1930s. From the early 1950s onward, Bühler always had representatives in Turkey. The establishment of a permanent Bühler Türkiye office took place in the mid-1980s. Since those years, Bühler has made significant contributions to the development of Turkish industry, playing a pioneering role in the establishment of Turkey's first chocolate, grain and food processing, animal feed production, oil production, pulses, paints and inks manufacturing facilities through the supply of machinery, technology, production lines and complete factories. The company has brought European technology to the service of Turkish industry both during the establishment and development phases of the sectors in which it operates. Today, Bühler Türkiye continues its activities with a team of 35 employees in-house and approximately 80 total personnel including partners, expanding its operations through technical sales activities alongside service engineering, technologist services, local procurement and local project management functions, while also strengthening its capabilities in spare parts storage, testing and demonstration applications within the country. With two offices in Istanbul, a service center in Izmir and an office and application center in Ankara, along with a network of service engineers spread throughout Turkey, the company has doubled its revenue in foreign currency terms over the last 5 years and continues its Bühler operations.

What are the sectors you serve and the product groups you offer, particularly in the paints and inks sectors?

Bühler carries out its activities in the paints and inks sector under the 'Grinding and Dispersion' business unit. Bühler is among the select few companies capable of producing machinery and technology at all scales for wet grinding in every process requiring wet grinding, at every target particle size and for every product viscosity. In this context, for liquid inks suitable for all printing techniques such as flexo and rotogravure, digital printing inks and applications such as agricultural chemicals, as well as for paints produced with high quality expectations in the paints sector including automotive paints, coil coatings, marine paints, anti-corrosive paints, color filters and color pastes and other low to medium viscosity products, we have our Cenomic™ series full-capacity horizontal disk-type bead mills and our unique high-energy MicroMedia™ series vertical pin-type bead mills capable of production down to nano sizes. Regarding pre-grinding and dispersion requirements in this sector, I can say that with our revolutionary new technology MacroMedia™, we have changed the rules of the game. With this technology where we have combined both mixing and pre-grinding processes in a single machine, we have achieved significant success both in Turkey and worldwide. For operations involving products with medium to high to extreme viscosities such as high-density ceramic pastes, glass paint pastes, metal paint pastes, offset inks, coldset-heatset inks, sheetfed inks, banknote inks, mineral processes, textile dyes and cosmetic colorants, our product portfolio includes SD-Series™, Trinomic™ and Trias™ series triple-roll mills, and K-Mill™ series conical mills. In addition to these, we provide complete facility and/or production line installations with all types of high-speed mixers, double-shaft, high-torque and similar mixers, press-out and other complementary conveying, metering and storage systems, delivered on a turnkey basis by our engineering department's expert teams with the experience and know-how dating back a century in this field, with the desired level of automation.

How important is R&D for you and could you discuss the R&D work you conduct and the resources you allocate to these activities?

R&D is the DNA of Bühler's corporate culture, which has a 162-year history. I believe it is useful to speak with specific figures at this point. 50% of Bühler's annual turnover at approximately 3 billion francs comes from technologies produced in the last 5 years. This development is the result of a culture that allocates 5% of its annual revenue to R&D activities each year. Bühler makes its mark on the sector with an annual R&D budget of approximately 150 million francs, and with more than 1,200 patents, it leads not only today's technologies but also the technologies of the future. The reflections of this leadership in the paints and inks sector can be listed as Cenomic™-Optima, which we developed and launched in 2022, MicroMedia™-Invicta, which we launched in 2021, and of course MacroMedia™ technology, the game changer of the sector.

Could you share details about your domestic and international sales activities?

Bühler is a Switzerland-based technology manufacturer operating in more than 140 countries worldwide. Founded in 1860, Bühler today serves globally with approximately 13,000 employees, 37 production facilities and 100 local sales and service stations. Our Turkey team is part of Bühler's third largest but highest growth region, the Middle East, Africa and India region, which also contains 3 production facilities. In this context, in addition to our Turkey sales team serving all the sectors in which we are active, we also have the opportunity to benefit from the region's extensive human resources and technical capabilities. Within this region, Azerbaijan, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan are also managed from Istanbul.

How do you evaluate the development of the paints sector in Turkey and what is the importance of the Turkish market for Bühler?

It is possible to say that the paints sector in Turkey has undergone development and globalization phases, particularly over the last 10 years, following its establishment and growth. Although construction paints, driven by the construction sector, still constitute a large portion of production, there is rapid growth in the domestic market for industrial paint production and on the other hand there is also noticeable export potential from Turkey to the region. For this reason, we are witnessing a period in which the interest and investments of global players are increasing. Alongside large American and European players, particularly the entry of Japanese companies into the sector appears to have increased both competition and export volumes. At this point, it is gratifying to see that Turkish manufacturers, in addition to the strong know-how and market experience they already possess, are beginning to make transformations to keep pace with global competition from a technological standpoint. That is why we at Bühler, with an understanding of thinking globally but acting locally, are positioned at the very heart of this sector transformation, continuing our mission through both machinery and technology as well as automation and high-quality service products and services.

Bühler's motto is 'Innovations for Better World'. Starting from this motto, what does innovation mean to you and what are you doing in this area?

While innovation is a very popular concept, we also witness it being used as a marketing tool with hollowed-out content. Above all, I think that genuine innovation and future thinking are not endeavors that companies can pursue alone. For this reason, our belief is to act within an understanding of stakeholder participation, working together with academia, producers and suppliers, startups, associations and even our competitors, creating a multiplier effect in this context together. I would like to mention our "CUBIC – Innovation Center" at Bühler's Swiss headquarters, which opened in 2019 as a product of this understanding. In this facility, which we realized with a 50 million franc budget, application laboratories for technologies encompassing all of Bühler's business units are housed within 6,000 m² of enclosed space. On the other hand, we work with world-leading universities such as ETH, St.Gallen and EPFL and their academics in joint research and development groups, providing both technological and financial support to more than 100 startups. A study by Harvard University shows that during major global crises, only 9 out of every 100 companies emerge from the crisis stronger. And the most important common thing that companies that manage to enter this 9% do is invest in new technologies and innovation rather than budget cuts or downsizing moves. That is why Bühler allocated a budget of 450 million francs to R&D and innovation over the last 2 years in the global crisis created by the pandemic. As a result, in these last 2 years we have launched nearly 100 new technologies in many different fields to the market. We achieved this together.

Reducing energy expenditure in the fight against the climate crisis is also one of the areas receiving attention. Could you share the steps Bühler has taken in this regard?

Every day, 2 billion people worldwide are fed with food produced using Bühler technologies, and every day 1 billion people travel in equipment with many components produced using Bühler technologies. 65% of flour, 60% of chocolate, 50% of aluminum die-cast automobile parts, 40% of packaging inks and 30% of automotive paints in the world are produced using Bühler technologies. Being a brand with such direct impact on both industry and consumers, we feel directly responsible toward nature. For this reason, Bühler has signed on to 7 main items within the United Nations Sustainability goals that concern us. And we are working with all our might to achieve measurable and clear gains for this purpose. We have set ourselves the goal of working with 50% less waste, 50% less energy and 50% less water in the production and use of our machinery by 2050. We are conducting our R&D work and new technology projects in this direction. We have calculated the carbon footprint of all Bühler offices, service stations and production facilities worldwide. We are making investments to gradually reduce these.

Finally, could you tell us about Bühler Türkiye's targets for the coming period?

As of 2023, we are transforming our service center in Izmir Kemalpaşa into an application and training center at the same time. Our customers will have the opportunity to test and see our wet grinding technologies with their own products at this center. In addition to this, both theoretical seminars and training as well as practical machine technical training will be organized at this center. Furthermore, we are doubling our spare parts warehouse here, including grinding media of all sizes, in an effort to respond to our customers' needs in the fastest and highest quality manner. Finally, as mentioned previously, we are in ongoing discussions with various companies regarding new partnerships that will serve from Turkey to the global market in an open manner toward stakeholder participation and collaboration. We will continue to share developments through your publication.