Evren Orkun İğdemir Answered Our Questions

In the interview we conducted, Boltas Contract Logistics Director and Executive Board Member Evren Orkun İğdemir answered our questions. İğdemir provided information about Boltas's storage and transport activities, particularly related to the transportation of chemical substances.

We would like to introduce you to our readers. Could you tell us about your educational background, professional career and areas of interest?

I am Evren Orkun İğdemir, born in Istanbul in 1981. I graduated from Istanbul University's Econometrics Department in 2003 and have 19 years of experience in the logistics sector. I have been serving as Contract Logistics Director at Boltas since January 2022.

Could you describe the products and services you operate? What are the factors to be considered particularly in storage and transport activities related to the transportation of chemical substances?

Boltas provides innovative end-to-end services in road transport, air transport, maritime transport, minivan services, rail transport, project transport, domestic transport, ADR transport and storage. With our fleet of over 1,000 owned vehicles and equipment, we carry out over 50,000 loadings annually. In storage services, one of the most critical points in logistics, we produce customized solutions for our customers with storage areas exceeding 50,000 square meters in different parts of Turkey and Europe. We are careful to meet our customers with our service quality both domestically and internationally. We continue to provide customs warehousing, free warehousing, value-added services and inventory management services in important points of Europe, particularly in Germany and Italy. [caption id="attachment_158066" align="aligncenter"] Boltas Contract Logistics Director and Executive Board Member Evren Orkun İğdemir[/caption] Regarding the transport of chemical substances, which requires special equipment, expertise and experience, we manage the transport and storage of all hazardous materials (flammable, inflammable, explosive, liquid, gas) with our vehicles compliant with ADR regulations and international standards, our certified drivers, and with the highest level security systems and technologies in the conditions and requirements prescribed by regulations. By managing all these processes meticulously, we pay careful attention to understanding the characteristics of chemical substances well, ensuring proper labeling, storage in appropriate packaging, transport and storage in suitable areas. During the storage and transport of such products, we consider factors such as the use of appropriate protective equipment, preparedness against fire, explosion and other emergencies as points to be taken into account during operations.

Could you tell us about Boltas's environmentally friendly practices and sustainability activities?

To protect nature and contribute to sustainability in all respects, we reduce our carbon footprint across all our work processes from our operations to our office and storage areas. We equip our digital infrastructure with the most current systems to properly understand technology and integrate it into our services. Global changes and transformations have major impacts, particularly for strategically located countries like Turkey. In this context, what measures has Boltas taken to adapt to changing conditions? Particularly during the pandemic period and with developments in the region where we are located in recent times, we have all experienced together, as a world and as Turkey, how rapidly change and transformation can occur. To keep pace with this change, we are diversifying our service offerings. We are making investments to diversify the sectors and geographies we serve through different modes. By balancing unforeseeable risks, we aim to adapt more quickly to market conditions. During this period, Boltas, by reading instantaneous changes with a proactive approach, increased our storage capacity by 25 percent and raised our storage area above 50,000 square meters. In the same period, we increased our domestic transport capacity from 8,500 annual trips to 11,500 trips, achieving 35 percent growth in this area. With this growth in both storage and domestic transport, we have provided sustainable logistics services for our customers. Additionally, "customer experience" became another focus area for us. To ensure that our customers view us not as a supplier but as a solution partner, we conduct Net Promoter Score measurements to work on how we can further improve their experience. We can list the important arguments for easier adaptation to changing conditions as increasing the range of sellable products, investing in people and education, and prioritizing R&D investments. All three of these topics are included in our 3-year strategic plans at Boltas.

Do you have any investments planned for future periods? If so, what are the criteria you prioritize in these investment plans?

The world is turning faster than ever with the development of logistics and technology. We continue to carry forward, with a sense of responsibility, the strength and potential we derive from our past to the future in response to today's changing conditions and customer expectations. Within the scope of our three-year strategic development plans, we plan to invest particularly in storage and technology-focused value-added services. We will implement some of these investments in Turkey and some in Europe. By the end of 2025, we aim to increase our total storage capacity by 140 percent. In addition, in the transport segment, we will continue our investments particularly in ADR transport and plan to increase our capacity in this area by 75 percent by the end of 2025.