Interview with Aylin Zakuto, General Manager of IMCD Türkiye

IMCD Turkey General Manager Aylin Zakuto shared her insights on IMCD Turkey's operations in the paints and coatings chemicals sector in an engaging interview.Zakuto provided valuable information about the company's activities in the paints and construction chemicals industry.  

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

I started my career at ISP immediately after graduating from the Chemistry Department at Boğaziçi University. At ISP, which continues operations as Ashland, I was responsible for the Turkey, Middle East and Africa markets for nearly 10 years. My primary work involved sales of pharmaceutical specialty chemicals. During this time, I completed my Master's degree in Organic Chemistry at Marmara University. After ISP, I joined IMCD Turkey. At IMCD, I spent approximately 10 years working in various departments including Sales Management, Department Management, and International Supplier Management. I have been serving as General Manager of IMCD Turkey for the past two years. I have two wonderful sons. I make it a priority to maintain a balance between work and family life.

Could you share with us the founding story and development process of IMCD Turkey?

IMCD is a Netherlands-based distributor of specialty chemicals and food ingredients involved in sales, marketing and distribution. As a leading company in its field, it provides to suppliers and customers across EMEA, Asia-Pacific and the Americas a broad product portfolio supported by innovative formulations aligned with industry trends. Listed on Euronext in Amsterdam (IMCD), IMCD operates globally across more than 50 countries on 6 continents with approximately 3,700 employees and 56,000 customers, working in close collaboration to provide value to suppliers worldwide. IMCD Turkey, founded in 2004, has achieved market-leading positions in many sectors through supplier partnerships, new product groups and company acquisitions over the years. IMCD Turkey also established a dedicated Paints & Construction Chemicals Laboratory and Food Laboratory in Istanbul to support sales teams and provide technical solutions, and added a Cosmetics Laboratory this year.  

What products and product groups does your company serve? Which sectors do you serve?

IMCD Turkey is a market-leading company in specialty chemicals distribution, both globally and in Turkey. We supply raw materials to end-product manufacturers in the paints, construction chemicals, pharmaceuticals, personal care, plastics, food and textiles sectors. As of the end of 2021, we are actively working with over 2,000 customers.

What are your product groups for the paints and coatings sector?

Our product portfolio in the paints and coatings sector consists of organic, inorganic and anti-corrosive pigments, carbon blacks, acrylic, epoxy, polyurethane, silicone and alkyd resins, specialty monomers and acrylates, cellulose ethers, nitrocellulose, rheology control additives, wetting agents, defoamers, surface modifiers, thickeners and wax groups, water-repellent additives and silanes, powder polymers, starch ethers and fibers, and superplasticizers and flow modifiers.  

How do you evaluate the paints and coatings sector in Turkey? What is the importance of operating in this field for you?

The Turkish paints, construction and coatings sectors are of great importance for our specialty chemicals product portfolio. Particularly with the pandemic period, the increase in domestic demand and exports had a positive impact on the sector. Due to its geographic location, our country plays a bridge role for neighboring countries. However, thanks to economy-focused construction sector approaches, the sector maintains a constantly active and dynamic structure. As IMCD Turkey, we believe we have demonstrated our confidence in both the sector and our country by opening a laboratory among distributor companies in early 2018. We are proud to say that we were the first company to open a laboratory in this field. We continue to serve the needs of the market with our global technical network and experts in Turkey.  

What is the importance of R&D for your company? Could you share details about your recent R&D and laboratory activities?

As IMCD Turkey, we conduct solution-oriented and innovative work in our laboratories for the Paints and Construction Chemicals, Food and Personal Care divisions in line with our customers' requests and new trends. We also carry out joint projects with other IMCD laboratories worldwide and the suppliers we represent. We also provide technical training to customers and sales teams in our laboratories. Through advanced training sessions conducted under the IMCD Academy umbrella on selected specific topics, our employees are able to develop faster and easier solutions to our customers' problems. Additionally, in our laboratories we develop solutions for problems our customers are currently experiencing and contribute to their new product development. This is a critical point for us in terms of ensuring high customer satisfaction. Through the synergy of our other laboratories, we can develop innovative solutions for our customers.  

Could you tell us about your quality policy? What points do you emphasize to maintain quality in your products and ensure customer satisfaction?

As IMCD, we closely monitor both local and global regulations. In our laboratory, we work on developing alternative products for raw materials whose usage rates are subject to reduction. We regularly share trends and new environmental regulations with our customers. In the paints and construction chemicals field, we have solutions for products free of substances harmful to human health, and in recent years our solutions are low VOC, lead-free and free of carcinogenic substances. Similarly, in the personal care and cosmetics field, aligned with the shift towards natural raw materials, our portfolio includes natural raw material solutions. We ensure that these raw materials have Ecocert and Cosmos certifications.  

What does sustainability mean for IMCD and what work are you doing in the sustainability field?

As a company playing an active role in the chemical industry's value chain, IMCD values conducting business by embracing environmental and social sustainability. We have adopted a mode of operation that balances our economic, environmental and social needs by using the world's limited resources sustainably, minimizing our impact on the environment while doing so, and creating more with less. In this direction, we closely monitor our customers' needs and develop the most appropriate solutions to those needs. Generally, in our trend analyses we focus on healthy, sustainable and carbon emission-reducing product groups. In paints and construction chemicals, interest in water-based, antibacterial and hygienic coating systems has begun to increase. On the construction chemicals side, systems that enable energy savings through horizontal and green architecture are coming to the forefront. As IMCD, we work on products aligned with all trends in our laboratories and provide appropriate solutions to our customers.  

Could you tell us about your company's future goals?

With the pandemic, we expect raw material supply challenges and increased logistics costs to continue for some time. We also expect an increase in back-to-nature concepts in terms of product range. Additionally, we are facing years in which traditional business models will change and digitalization will increasingly gain importance. Digital trend-aligned solutions will take up more space in our lives, and companies' sales and marketing strategies will be shaped in this direction. Through digitalization investments made by IMCD, we activated our MyIMCD B2B platform. With this application, to which we add new customers every day, we have transferred many services such as online ordering, sample requests and technical support to the digital platform, making IMCD active 24 hours a day. In addition, we continued to convey innovations through virtual fairs and online web seminars led by our experts. Our digitalization investments will continue. Besides this, with both new acquisitions and organic growth targets, we believe we will take IMCD Turkey even further.  

Could you tell us about your work on social benefit?

As IMCD, just as in every other field, we believe that opportunities should be provided to those in need in social matters. In this direction, we do not limit our brand promise only to our business partners, customers and employees; we reflect it in our corporate social responsibility activities as "equal opportunity in education." Last year, as part of our company's 25th anniversary, we collaborated with the Turkey Education Volunteers Foundation (TEGV) for children facing difficulties in accessing education. Through TEGV, we initially distributed 351 tablets to children aged 7-11 in regions where access to remote education is limited, so that children could benefit from modern educational opportunities. In this way, in addition to the curriculum of the Ministry of National Education, children were able to benefit from TEGV's remote education platform containing science, mathematics, English, informatics, reading and mathematics subjects and access social-emotional learning activities from internet-enabled tablets. Additionally, we made our laboratories in Istanbul available for children's online experiments and conducted work aimed at making children love chemistry. We aim to grow the project exponentially every year. With this philosophy, we also collaborated with TEGV this year and became a sponsor of the Firefly Science Mobile Laboratory that visits village schools in Anatolia. In the 2022-2023 academic year, the IMCD Firefly Science Mobile Laboratory, which will visit village schools, aims to introduce science to 1,500 children and foster a love of science in its first year of operation.