We Conducted an Interview with Haluk Giray, Marketing Director of Sarten Ambalaj

Sarten Ambalaj, which manufactures metal and plastic packaging for a broad range of applications from industrial products to food and cosmetics, was represented in an interview by Marketing Director Haluk Giray, who discussed the company's development since its establishment, services for customer satisfaction, targets and projects. First, could you briefly tell our readers about yourself, your educational background and your professional experience in the sector? I have been serving as Marketing Director at Sarten Ambalaj since 2011. Previously, I held senior management positions in the oil, chemicals and packaging sectors. I studied economics. Could you outline the development process of your company since its establishment? How long has your company been operating? Sarten began metal packaging production in 1972 at its Çorlu facility. As Turkey's market grew and customer needs expanded, Sarten established new factories. Plastic packaging production started in 1992, and aerosol and canned goods production began in 1996. Today, as Sarten Ambalaj, we serve our customers with a total of 15 factories, two of which are located abroad. Mitsui, one of the world's largest investment companies, became a 15% partner in Sarten in 2015. Through this partnership, we aim to have greater influence in the global market. In 2014, we joined the Turquality brand support programme. This programme, while increasing our effectiveness in exports, will contribute to our preparations for the 2020s by implementing improvements in many processes. Also in 2014, we made a comprehensive SAP investment to develop our information technologies. With the infrastructure created through this investment, we aimed to restructure our business processes with a lean approach towards corporate goals such as becoming the preferred choice for our customers and being able to respond to customer needs with quality and speed. With the project going live, we expect efficiency improvements leading to a 20% reduction in raw material inventory and reductions of up to 40% in work-in-progress inventory levels across all our operations.

Could you discuss your product groups, their characteristics and the sectors you serve? What are the features of your product groups serving the paints and coatings sector?

As Sarten, within the concept of "Packaging Supermarket," we produce and market tinplate and plastic packaging for the food, industrial products and cosmetics sectors. Our paint packaging, which is part of our industrial products group, is manufactured at Sarten's Gebze, Manisa and Çorlu tinplate factories. Plastic packaging is produced at our Gebze and Karacabey plastic facilities. At our Gebze and Manisa factories, we have a diverse production range capable of meeting all the needs of a given customer in the paints and coatings sector. Our company manufactures round and rectangular tinplate packaging from 250ml to 25 litres, and by producing similar products at different factories, we essentially serve as our own alternative. UN (ADR) certification work for products manufactured at our tinplate factories has been completed through both TSE and international certification firms. At our Karacabey plastic injection factory, paint buckets from 0.5 litres to 25 litres are produced. The buckets are produced from standard stock moulds as well as custom designs according to customer requests. Recently, synthetic thinner packaging, which has shifted from tinplate to plastic PET bottles, is being produced at our Gebze plastic factory, including special child-lock caps.

Could you discuss your R&D activities?

Our R&D department, which pursues design and manufacturing activities for automation on the production lines of all our factories, leads the sector in this area with a total of 15 TUBITAK-supported ongoing and completed projects. The purpose of the projects we have carried out is to contribute to our company through automatic systems that reduce energy costs, increase capacity and quality, and completely eliminate manual control methods. In implementing these projects, we carry out all processes from design and analysis work through manufacturing and testing phases within our own facilities, and we are committed to internalizing academic knowledge related to our field through university support. The "Automatic Signal-Image Processing System for Metal Printing Monitoring and Error Detection," which we will put into operation at our Silivri factory in 2016, is a TUBITAK project that, thanks to academic support from Yıldız Technical University and software developed uniquely within our company, will monitor our printing quality and enable us to provide defect-free packaging to our customers. We anticipate that the implementation of this project and the use of the system on all our printing machines will bring about new projects as well. Not only our R&D department employees, but all Sarten Ambalaj employees receive training to develop an innovative perspective. As a result of these trainings, we take implementable innovative ideas from our personnel at all levels onto our agenda. To this end, the more we can disseminate R&D logic and innovative thinking throughout our company, the more we will continue to shape the metal and plastic packaging sector. At our Silivri R&D centre, mould production and revisions, including those for the paints and coatings sector, are carried out with the highest technologies. In addition to our own innovative projects, we also develop joint projects with our customers.

Could you provide information about your production capacity and sales activities?

In 2015, we produced 160,000 tonnes of metal products and 15,000 tonnes of plastic packaging. We have the capacity to produce 3.5 billion tinplate cans and 750 million plastic bottles annually. Depending on the growth of our customers in our country and export markets, we continuously make capacity expansion investments. This year, we put into operation Europe's largest printing line in the metal offset area at our Silivri factory. In 2016, a second line will also be commissioned. A new factory building was purchased and put into operation in Adana. For the first time, a new printing line was established in Adana. At our Manisa factory, investments were made that increased capacity in box production. At our Manisa site, we also established our Endpak factory, dedicated exclusively to industrial packaging production, with a total area of 10,000m2. In this way, we will be able to provide faster service to our paint-producing customers in the Izmir region. These are some of the investments made in 2015. These investments will continue in the coming years, in parallel with growth in our country and in the region where we operate. Do you have custom packaging production according to your customers' requests? In the preparation processes of our products, we maintain close cooperation with our customers to meet their demands and needs. We also assist them with graphic and visual work. With the CTP pre-press preparation system used in our tinplate factories, we prepare designs for offset printing technology. Our R&D department also provides solutions through its innovative work that will make a difference for our customers. Examples of these include segmented packaging, various sizes, different cap formats and equipment. Additionally, we provide our UN-certified products within the scope of ADR cargo and transport safety to ensure that packaging is physically more secure, both in transportation and on shelves. For plastic injection buckets, we create company-specific bucket designs and conduct studies to provide maximum strength using minimal material. The designs created are supported with special simulation programmes and verification studies are completed through laboratory testing before implementation. What are your activities in the area of sustainability? Since packaging is the most widely used industrial product used with almost every product today, we place great importance on conducting our work with an environmentally conscious approach. To reduce the environmental impact of packaging, we have been continuously reducing material weights over recent years. We do not use harmful heavy metals in the materials we use or in our processes. We make improvements in energy consumption, bring our production facilities closer to the customer, prioritize local resources, reduce waste and scrap, and through other efforts strive to minimize our impact on the environment. Last year, we initiated life cycle assessment (LCA) studies examining the environmental impact of packaging at every stage. Through this analysis, we can carefully address environmental impacts in all processes, including the production of raw materials, the recovery of packaging after its useful life, and its evaluation as waste. In the packaging we produce, we use materials such as metal, which have the property of infinite recyclability, as the basic raw material. As Sarten, we conduct our emission measurements periodically. Thanks to the modern incinerator systems installed in our factories, we maintain our emissions approximately 10 times below legal limits. Additionally, through induction heating furnaces that we developed and whose use we are increasingly spreading across our factories, we achieve energy savings of up to 50% in metal heating operations. In addition to all environmental activities, we conduct business in accordance with our ethics policy and support sustainable, growth-enabling competition in the market. We provide training to our customers on packaging and strive to better understand their needs. Similarly, we provide support to educational institutions on packaging issues within the scope of corporate social responsibility. We play an active role in the management of the European Metal Packaging Manufacturers Association (EMPAC), which conducts awareness-raising work on sustainability across Europe in the metal packaging sector. In Turkey, we conduct close cooperation with the Packaging Manufacturers Association (ASD) and ÇEVKO.

Could you provide information about your company's quality policy and principles?

As a leading and pioneering company in the sector, we use our role of setting standards in our products and services to provide the maximum benefit to our customers in presenting their products to the market in a competitive, healthy and reliable manner. We closely monitor regulatory developments in Europe and America. We immediately comply with these regulations without waiting for regulatory changes in our country. In this way, we always produce packaging at standards beyond what legal regulations require and present it for consumer use. One of our company's core principles is customer focus. This is a quality sought in all our managers and employees. From this perspective, we place emphasis on keeping all channels of customer communication open and using them effectively, creating new channels, offering a wide range of products to meet their needs, providing support to our customers, and efforts to ensure customer satisfaction. In addition to our customers, the satisfaction of all other stakeholders is a generally accepted principle for success at Sarten. The "Kalitem A" campaign conducted within the company is based on the reality that employee quality and satisfaction will be reflected in product quality, and pursues the goal of creating better and satisfied employees and better leaders. Within our Sarten Academy, significant resources are allocated for training future leaders to be appropriate to today's requirements and have vision. We work closely with our suppliers, sharing the belief that any success we achieve is success for all of us. Continuous improvement and development are a necessity of competition today. For this reason, we conduct various studies at different levels. These efforts span a wide range from radical organizational changes to kaizen work at the grassroots level. As Sarten employees and leaders, we carry out change together as part of these projects. Does your company have social responsibility projects? In all cities where we operate, we particularly support projects with innovative ideas and projects that improve quality of life. We provided a Technology Workshop to Silivri Industry Vocational Anatolian High School and opened it for student use in the 2014-2015 academic year. The Technology Workshop, which includes machine maintenance, computer-aided design and machining departments and is installed in approximately 400m2 of indoor space, develops students' professional skills in line with today's requirements while also contributing to meeting our country's need for skilled intermediate-level personnel. Through the training and internship opportunities we provide at the school, we support students throughout their development process. As of the 2015-2016 academic year, under the "Hand in Hand for Tomorrow Sister School Sister Institution Project" of Silivri District Governorate, Silivri Industry Vocational Anatolian High School, Değirmenköy Multi-Program Anatolian Vocational High School and Silivri Lions Esen İbak Special Education Centre became sister institutions. We take pride in supporting our sister schools' projects as Sarten. Additionally, as Sarten, we work to minimize the environmental impact of all our activities and commit to fulfilling all our environmental legal responsibilities at the highest standards in line with our sustainable environmental approach. As a company aware of its environmental responsibilities, we support the recycling and reuse of materials such as metal, paper and plastic.

Could you discuss the activities your company has undertaken in terms of occupational safety?

Within our Occupational Health and Safety Policy, from Sarten Ambalaj management level through our employees, suppliers, subcontractors and customers, our most important objective is the creation and maintenance of high awareness and culture regarding occupational health and safety at every step. In our facilities' performance assessments, our unwavering goal regarding occupational health and safety is zero work accidents and zero occupational diseases. Within this belief and awareness, we have adopted a proactive approach principle. Our objective is to identify potential work accidents and occupational diseases without their occurrence and to take necessary measures in the shortest possible time. We conduct regular site inspections with our highly qualified occupational safety specialist team in this regard. Our specialized maintenance team also takes necessary corrective measures regarding the non-conformities identified. Our team regularly monitors changes in occupational health and safety legislation and raises awareness among management and employees on this matter. We have direct compliance with all regulations, notifications and circulars issued on this subject, beginning with Law No. 6331 on Occupational Health and Safety. In the management review meetings regularly held by Sarten Ambalaj management, occupational health and safety and environmental issues are addressed and evaluated in the planned facility, infrastructure and machinery investments we plan to make. What strategies have made Sarten successful? With our accumulated technology and trained workforce, we adopt as our mission the creation of quality and best solutions and the addition of value to everyone working with us. We succeed in being the leading institution preferred by customers for our characteristics of quality products, fast and good service and competitive pricing within Turkey and its neighbouring region. The leading distinctive features that have taken our company to advanced stages include establishing very close relationships with our customers, always being transparent and honest with them, and striving to always understand them. What can you say about internal communication? What work are you doing to improve employee performance? With our belief that quality products are produced by quality people, we place great importance on training. We established Sarten Academy in 2008 to train future managers. Later, the scope of Sarten Academy was expanded to include the operator level. In this programme, under the guidance of expert academics, training is provided on various subjects including personal development, management skills, production, product knowledge, product development, sales techniques, exports, finance and accounting. We prioritize the development of employees at every level and invest in people. We create an appropriate environment for our employees to develop personally and professionally, and we seek to maximize their productivity through career planning. An example of the training we can provide is the Career Faculty programme we prepared in cooperation with Koç University's Faculty of Business Administration, in which managers and management candidates within our company receive training in leadership of self and others, financial management leadership, strategy and supply chain leadership, and marketing and brand leadership, along with vision-opening seminars. How did 2015 go for your company and your goals? Are there projects you plan to realize in 2016? Data from the first 11 months of 2015 shows that we matched the same period of 2014 in both domestic and foreign markets. In TL terms, there is 20% growth. We will achieve a turnover of TRY 920 million at our facilities in Turkey in 2015. Among the projects planned for 2016, projects for increasing our printing capacity come first. With these investments, serving all sectors, including the paints and coatings sector, we will increase our capacity and service speed on one hand, while on the other we will see serious improvements in print quality. In parallel with this increase in printing capacity, we will also achieve significant developments by installing automation on our production presses and lines. Due to our inclusion in the Turquality brand support programme, we are undergoing major expansion with projects included in the roadmap we have prepared under headings such as brand development and supply chain, SAP-linked projects within our R&D department and new software and infrastructure projects. With these and other items on our agenda, we aim to enter the 2020s with confident steps. Finally, do you have a message you would like to convey to the sector? First and foremost, we thank the paints and coatings sector for the confidence they have shown in our company. We are open to any suggestions from our customers in our efforts to develop ourselves. On this occasion, we extend our wishes for success in the new year to the sector. Kaydet