An Engaging Interview with Mert Özgen, General Manager of Anton Paar

We conducted an enjoyable interview with Anton Paar General Manager Mert Özgen. In our interview, Özgen answered questions about Anton Paar's transition from a working bench to a global company and matters related to the industry.  

First of all; best wishes for your new position. Could you tell our readers briefly about yourself, your education, and your professional background? Where have you worked before, and how long have you been in this sector?

I studied at Istanbul Boys' High School and graduated from ITU Electrical Engineering, and completed my master's degree at Munich Technical University. I then began my professional career at Dürr and Zeiss. Since early March, I have been serving at Anton Paar. In terms of sector, I have more experience in paints, automotive, and precision measurement instruments. While working in these sectors, I have now shifted somewhat toward the chemistry sector. But since electronics is in everything and our instruments are largely composed of electronics, I have seen the great advantage of having studied electrical engineering.

Could you tell us about Anton Paar Turkey? How long has Anton Paar been operating in Turkey?

Anton Paar operated in Turkey for many years through a distributor, Kalkan Ltd. Later, in 2011, it came to invest here and took over the existing knowledge from the distributor, entering into a new structure. By 2016, within 5 years, it had built a team of 21 people and grew rapidly in Turkey in terms of both sales figures and team size. Anton Paar, which achieved significant growth over these 5 years, has now passed this flag to me.

Well, could you tell us about Anton Paar's transition from a working bench to a global company? It has quite a different story globally. Could you briefly tell us this story?

Anton Paar began in 1922 as a firm doing simple metalwork, such as locksmithing. But when we look at today, Anton Paar has become a company operating in many countries around the world, generating serious revenues, and operating globally in the instrumentation field. Quite interestingly, Anton Paar's daughter, the company's founder, worked at a lathe as a woman in the 1930s, bringing the company to certain heights. Later, a professor from Austria, Prof. Kratky, needed an instrument for a measurement. To make this instrument, he goes to the Anton Paar firm, known for precise workmanship. And together they produce the necessary instrument for his research. That is, the theory comes from the professor, and the Anton Paar firm assists with the practice. Subsequently, they begin to mass-produce this instrument for measuring density using a U-tube, to also serve other companies' needs on the market. The transition from a simple workshop to a world company began in this way. It should also be noted that Anton Paar is a foundation company, transferred to a foundation many years ago. When you look at it, you see that established German, Austrian, and Swiss-based companies are generally transferred to foundations. Therefore, Anton Paar's family, whose surname changed due to marriage, is today the Santner family, yes, they are present in management, Santner-surnamed people work in different positions, but the shares are held in the foundation. Of course, a company needs to make a profit to survive. But since you are not pursuing daily profit, this creates the possibility of long-term thinking and also allows the company to transfer serious funds to R&D. When you allocate serious resources to R&D, this brings technological superiority. That is, with the serious impact of R&D in Anton Paar instruments, we really have a reputation as very serious, solid premium machines on the market.

So how does Anton Paar Global view the Turkish market?

On this matter, I can share the view of CEO Friedel Sartner directly – Turkey has a serious place as a developing market. Perhaps we cannot perceive this as much within Turkey itself, but despite all our daily difficulties, there is serious confidence in Turkey from a Western European perspective. Your product variety is extensive, could you briefly mention your product groups? You are present in many sectors anyway, you have measurement instruments and applications…  

Could you tell us about your latest products?

Products are constantly coming out; if we start listing them, we won't finish in this interview. But, Anton Paar is known most in the beverage sector both in Turkey and worldwide, especially with density measurement instruments. It is known for its products for alcoholic or non-alcoholic beverages, carbonated beverages. There is already serious brand superiority for Anton Paar in these areas. Apart from this, microwave ovens, petroleum test products, viscometers, inline measurement systems… We can speak of all these instruments' types that work online inline. Refractometer, polarimeter – what we call our optical group – besides that, indentation, scratch test instruments, tribometers. We have many automatic test instruments for tests in the automotive, chemistry, petroleum, and food sectors. By its nature, Anton Paar does not produce manual measurement systems, but in areas requiring automatic, high repeatability and precision, we have a large number of instruments.

Among this month's file topics, we also have mining chemicals and equipment used in the mining sector. What are your products for these sectors?

Of course, many different types of instruments are used in the mining sector, but especially toward the petroleum side we have flash point instruments, and in mining we can see many of our products and customers such as microwave digestion systems for sample preparation for instrumental instruments like ICP and AAS.

Could you tell us a bit about the after-sales technical service you provide to your customers?

  When a customer has a problem, fixing it has become somewhat simple, outdated service understanding. However, we see that our instruments really don't break down for years. Our customers are generally customers who attach extreme importance to quality, to quality measurement. Since production and quality control are this important, our customers don't want the instruments to stop or encounter problems. Therefore, we still attach great importance to preventive maintenance and want to make further progress in preventive maintenance.

Do you have any campaigns related to the green environment and sustainability?

The city of Graz, where Anton Paar's headquarters is located, has a known reputation. The company employs a serious proportion of disabled personnel. While everyone in Europe is practically afraid of refugees from countries like Syria and Afghanistan, our company hosts over 30 refugees in its facilities and makes efforts to include them in production. It dedicates serious effort, money, and labor to social activities. For example, if our employees go to work by company bus, they receive an addition to their salary; if they go by bicycle or on foot, they receive a larger addition. Let me share a memory briefly: when I went to the first training in Austria, after lunch a female employee gave each of us a ball and began having us do certain movements. I didn't understand at first, and when I asked, I learned she was an Anton Paar employee responsible for sports. Anton Paar has an initiative called Anton Paar in Bewegung, that is, "Anton Paar in Motion," trying to encourage people to be more active and to help them avoid health problems that arise from constantly sitting at a desk.

Why should customers prefer Anton Paar products, what are the characteristics that distinguish you from other companies?

First, as an Austrian, German, and Swiss-based company, we produce quality and reliable instruments. If you cannot trust the value that a quality control instrument measures, it has no value anyway. If you receive a report saying a product is correct and continue its production, but the instrument measured incorrectly, the cost of this is very high. So even though we may be a bit more expensive, I believe the quality of our instruments pays for itself many times over. We have many instruments sold by our distributor years ago that are still working very well. This could be another reason for preferring Anton Paar. The culture of our company, both locally and globally, is to try to do our work right and to maintain knowledge at a high level. For this purpose, all our employees participate quite frequently in standard training programs at our overseas centers. Anyone can sell a product to a customer, but we try to help with our consulting and knowledge, and we see this gaining a response on the customer side. This ultimately proves itself in our increasing sales figures. There are many distributor companies on the market, mostly companies work through distributors in the instrumentation field. But Anton Paar, thinking more of the future, has been investing in the company and team for quite some time. This allows it to provide a long-term and proper work environment to the same personnel, thus giving personnel the opportunity to develop themselves. In this way, it is possible to ensure long-term customer satisfaction and market share rather than short-term profit.

Do you have a message you'd like to convey to the sector? What would you like to say?

I believe that a somewhat greater initial investment in quality control instruments certainly pays for itself in the long term. I received a German-based education, studied in Germany, and have always worked with this kind of German-based companies. I believe that German work discipline and standing behind the products they produce has always been beneficial in the quality of manufactured instruments and the total cost of using those instruments. It upsets me that some companies spend resources on the car to be driven rather than on the instrument used in production.