Interview with Uğur Yardım, Founder and General Manager of Novatek Endüstri

In the interview we conducted, Novatek Endüstri Founder and General Manager Uğur Yardım answered our questions. Yardım provided information about Novatek Endüstri's R&D activities.

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

I was born in 1976 in Zile, Tokat. I am married with three children; my wife works as a teacher in the education system. I completed primary and secondary education at Bursa Çınar High School. In 2000, I graduated from Trakya University, Department of Mechanical Engineering. After graduation, my professional career began at a tube manufacturing plant in Izmir belonging to the Demirören corporate group. In 2002, I started working as a production engineer at a Manisa company that exclusively manufactured automotive paint booth systems, thereby entering the spray booth sector. At this company, I successfully served in production and factory management roles. In 2007, I resigned from these positions. Before founding Novatek, I conducted work on industrial facilities for approximately five years. With the support of my brothers, my wife and my work colleagues, I established Novatek in 2011 to bring innovation to the sector. Currently, I serve as General Manager at Novatek with approximately 19 years of experience in spray booth facilities.

Could you provide information about Novatek Endüstri's founding process and the stages it has gone through to reach its current state? What is Novatek Endüstri's structure today?

Novatek was launched in 2011 to bring innovation and new approaches to the industrial spray booth sector. Since its founding, it has signed successful projects in many areas and has become one of the leading companies in the sector in a very short time. Novatek's first customer was Kentpar Automotive, a company based in Konya, and I would like to extend special thanks to Ali Yavuz Kütük, who trusted us at that time. We built an automatic crankshaft wet paint facility that was entirely our own design and brought a different perspective and new approach in line with our founding purpose. This facility continues to operate successfully at the company today. Through our observations in the Konya region, we concluded that many previously built facilities had weak engineering designs, were built with a cut-and-paste approach, and most did not deliver the desired performance. Companies in Konya were therefore searching for a firm they could trust. By meeting this expectation with scientifically sound and correct engineering design, our facilities enhanced customer satisfaction and brought success.

During our company's first two years, we served companies in the Konya and Aksaray regions. We are currently implementing active projects in the Konya region, which remains our first market.

In 2013, with a new organizational structure, we began serving numerous companies in different sectors including defense industry, rail systems, aerospace industry and automotive industry, in addition to general industry. We believed that the greatest marketing is customer satisfaction and successful projects. As a team, we worked with this belief and did not take any work we did not believe in simply to gain the contract. As we delivered successful projects, our recognition in the sector and the trust in our company increased. We began efforts in 2013 onwards to ensure our company would be sought after in the global market by participating in many international trade fairs. We participated in Paint Expo held in Germany in 2018 and secured our place as participants in the Germany Paint Expo fair scheduled for April 2020. Today we export spray booth facilities to Russia, India, the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, Central Asia and many other regions.

As a company, we continuously conduct work on R&D and development. In this context, we took our place in 2017 as one of the first companies in the Teknokent within Manisa Celal Bayar University Teknokent.

We designed the first domestic explosion-proof lighting case for paint booths in Turkey, obtained Exproof Zone 22 and 21ATEX certificates from an internationally accredited certification company, and began using them as standard in all our facilities. We previously imported 3-axis personnel lifts used in paint booths from abroad. Subsequently, we developed these personnel lifts in our own R&D unit, obtained CE certificates and began using them in our built facilities. Through TÜBİTAK collaboration, we manufactured an automatic chemosil coating machine and obtained a utility model certificate, putting this machine into service in the rubber coating sector. We developed 3-axis and 4-axis automatic spray painting robots, providing improvements in establishing more efficient automatic painting lines. On 6-axis and 7-axis automatic spray painting robots and paint distribution systems, working together with our team and our domestic and international partners, we have signed many successful projects in the automotive sector. Today Novatek performs all automation software with its team of electrical engineers and electrical technicians. It manages all its project sites with its own team. Following project delivery, through its after-sales service department, it has established the infrastructure to respond as quickly as possible to customer requests. In 2020, Novatek began work on a new factory in the Manisa region with approximately 40,000 m² of open space and 10,000 m² of closed space, aiming to move to the new factory building by the end of 2020. The new factory building will have a 1,600 m² administrative section and a 2,000 m² R&D center.

Could you provide information about the products, brands and services that Novatek Endüstri offers for the coatings and surface treatment sectors?

We work as an engineering company providing services in surface coating technologies. In addition to our standard products, we undertake turnkey projects tailored to customer needs. In addition to our expertise in spray booth facilities, I can say we are one of the rare companies that contain many different projects within our scope. We develop and offer services for various projects tailored to customer needs. Some of these include: cleanrooms, thermal spray coating, acoustic isolation booths, dimmable finishing lines, chemosil coating, energy recovery systems, specially designed high-temperature ovens and others. After obtaining project designs from our technical team at Teknokent, we manufacture them at our factory and then conduct on-site assembly and commissioning with our own assembly team, providing the work we have done to our customers' services.

Could you tell us about your domestic and international sales activities? What types of products do you primarily sell to which regions domestically and internationally?

Domestically, we serve all regions according to demand. Internationally, we provide services to the regions I mentioned earlier. For all facilities we have built, we provide technical service and spare parts service through our after-sales service unit.

What kind of work do you conduct in the areas of innovation and R&D as Novatek Endüstri? Do you have any projects developed within the scope of university-industry collaboration, and if so, what are they?

As mentioned earlier, to better collaborate with universities, we work within Celal Bayar University Teknokent as İnova Arge, continuously developing new projects and utility models. We have successfully completed all tests on our automatic wood painting machine, on which we have been working for approximately one year. In designing this machine, with our extensive sectoral experience, we believe we have made this device with superior performance and specifications. We are carrying out our plans to undertake series production of this machine in the shortest time and present it to the global market.

Could you provide information about Novatek Endüstri's environmental policy and sustainability approach? What can you say about your work related to occupational health and safety?

First and foremost, respecting the life rights of future generations, we place great emphasis on energy efficiency in every facility we build and conduct serious R&D work on this matter. In this way, we reduce both the operating costs of our facilities and fulfill our responsibility toward the environment by reducing carbon emissions. We strive to produce environmentally conscious facilities, which is our company slogan. We provide necessary internal training to all our employees, first explaining that occupational safety begins with the individual, and raising awareness about compliance with workplace rules, which is company policy. Our occupational physician and occupational health and safety specialist continuously conduct risk analyses and make improvements. In this context, we obtained our ISO 18001 Occupational Health and Safety Management System certificate from an accredited organization.

What criteria do Novatek Endüstri prioritize when formulating investment plans? Does Novatek Endüstri have investment plans for upcoming periods, and if so, what are they?

We prioritize specialization at the sectoral level and continuously developing our own know-how through R&D work. In 2020, we plan to move to our new production factory with approximately 10,000 m² of closed space. In this factory, we plan to establish approximately 2,000 m² of R&D space to develop prototypes of machines we have designed, carry out their development, and simultaneously conduct practical training of our technical personnel.