We had a pleasant interview with Mr. Fırat Sağlam, Bühler Turkey General Manager, on the fields of activity of the company, R&D activities and company policies.
Could you please tell us about yourself and your professional background in the industry?
I was born in 1984 in Ankara. After getting my bachelor’s degree at Chemical Engineering, I had worked in different companies as Sales and Process Engineer in the US and also in Turkey.
Then, I joined Bühler Turkey in 2013. During my Bühler career, I have worked for grinding and dispersing business unit, first in Turkey, then in Iran, Pakistan and finally in the entire Middle East and Africa region as sales and business development manager. In 2020, I was appointed as the Sales Director for all business units in Turkey.
In the meantime, I received my MBA degree from Boğaziçi University and completed my 1-year education at the UK Ashridge Hult Business School as part of the Bühler Global Executive Development Program. Finally, I took over the general manager position
of Bühler Turkey in 2021 and I am still working on this position.
Could you please tell us the success story of Bühler Turkey from its establishment to the present?
Bühler started its activities in Turkey after invention of the first complete milling machine in 1890 and following that installing the first machine in Edirne in 1903.
Bühler machines have been used in 1920s and 1930s in Afyon and Bursa respectively. Bühler has always had representation offices in Turkey since the early 1950s. A permanent Bühler Turkey office was established in the mid 1980s.
Bühler has made serious contributions to the development of Turkish industry since these years by establishing of Turkey’s first chocolate, grain and food processing lines, feed production, oil production, pulses, paint and ink production facilities with its machines,
technologies, embeded lines, complete factories etc. by offering high quality European technologies.
This result of playing a leading role with its supplies to Turkish industrialists both in the establishment and development processes of the sectors.
Today, Bühler continues to expand its activities in Turkey with a staff of 35 people within its own body and a total of 80 people together with its partners; in addition to its technical sales activities, local capabilities have been increased by in service engineering, technology
services, local purchasing and local project management functions; as well as spare parts warehouse, test and demo application centers.
In addition to two offices in Istanbul, a service center in Izmir, another office and application center in Ankara, and a service engineer pool spread all over Turkey, it has doubled its turnover on foreign currency basis in the last 5 years and is active in all areas where Bühler has solutions.
Which sectors do you serve and what are your product groups, especially for paint and ink sectors?
Bühler carries out its activities in paint and ink sector under the ‘Grinding and Dispersing’ business unit. Bühler is one of the few companies that can manufacture machines and technologies at any scale, for any product in any viscosity, for any particle size distribution target in any process where wet grinding is required.
For this, we have Cenomic™ series, full-capacity disc type horizontal bead mills as well as MicroMedia™ series unique highenergy pin type vertical bead mills which can make
wet grinding even up to nano levels for operations of low-to-medium-viscosity products that suitable for all printing techniques such as roto & flexo gravure liquid inks, digital printing inks, beside other applications where high quality expectations are also there such as agrochemicals, automotive paints, coil coatings, marine paints, anticorrosive coatings, color filters, color pastes, etc.
I can say that we have changed the rules of the game with MacroMedia™, our revolutionary new wet milling technology that we offer for the pre-grinding and dispersing needs of this sector. We have achieved a serious success both in Turkey and around the world with this
technology, in which we combine both mixing and pregrinding processes in a single machine.
On the other hand we have SD-Serie™, Trinomic™ and Trias™ series three roller mill machines, as well as K-Mill™ series conical mills in our portfolio for operations of medium-highextreme- viscosity products such as high density ceramic pastes, glass dye pastes, metal dye pastes, offset inks, coldset-heatset inks, sheet-fed inks, banknote inks, mineral processes, textile dyes, cosmetic dyes etc.
Last but not least, we are able to provide all types of mixers, especially high-speed mixers, double shaft mixers and high torque mixers as well as press-outs and other complementary
transportation, dosing and storage systems yararlanin order to serve complete plant and/or line installations needs of our customers.
These studies are carried out with the expert teams of our engineering department
together with a century of experience and know-howin this field. We can implement any requested level of automation on these solutions.
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Service Engineers Mustafa Boran ve Ilyas Gökdemir, Operation Manager Uğur Abbasoğlu[/caption]
Could you please talk about how important R&D is to you and the opportunities you have allocated for these studies?
R&D is the DNA of Bühler’s long-established corporate culture with a history of 162 years. At this point, I think it is useful to talk with clear numbers. 50% of Bühler’s annual
turnover of approximately 3 billion swiss francs comes from the technologies it has been produced in the last 5 years.
This development is the result of a culture that allocates 5% of its income to R&D every year. We can say that Bühler has left its mark on the sector with an annual R&D budget of 150 million swiss francs in this field, and leads not only today’s but also the future’s technologies with more than 1200 patents.
The reflections of this leadership in the paint and ink sector are; Cenomic™-Optima,
which we developed and launched in 2022, MicroMedia™-Invicta, which we introduced in 2021, and, of course, MacroMedia™ technologies, the game changer of the industry.
Could you please share your domestic and international sales activities?
Bühler is a Swiss based technology manufacturer who operates in over 140 countries all around the world. Founded in 1860, Bühler today provides its global services with approximately 13’000 employees, 37 production facilities and 100 local sales and service
stations.
Our Turkey team is a part of Bühler’s Middle East, Africa and India region, which is the third largest but has the highest growth rate and it includes 3 production facilities in. Furthermore, besides our Turkey sales team, which serves all industries locally; we
also have the chance to benefit from the vast human resources and technical capabilities of the region. In this region additionally; Azerbaijan, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan are also managed from Istanbul.
How do you evaluate the development of the paint industry in Turkey and what is the importance of the Turkish market for Bühler?
It is possible to say that the paint industry in Turkey has been going through the stages of development and globalization, especially in the last 10 years. Although the construction industry and as a result of its driving effect, construction paints still cover a large part of the production; rapidly growing domestic market in industrial paint production and an export potential from Turkey to the region are also striking.
For this reason, we are experiencing a period in which the interest and investments of global players are increasing. In addition to the big players from the USA and Europe, the entry of Japanese companies into the sector seems to have increased both competition and
export volume.
At this point, it is very pleasing to see that Turkish manufacturers, in addition to the strong
know-how and market experience they already have, now start to make technological & digital transformations that can keep up with the global competition.
Here we, as Bühler, are at the heart of this transformation of the sector, with an understanding that can think globally but act locally; we continue our mission with both machinery and echnology, automation and high quality service products and services.
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Service Manager Çağdaş Özkan, Turkey General Manager Fırat Sağlam and Sales Manager Ersin Cantürk[/caption]
Bühler’s motto is ‘Innovations for Better World’. Based on this motto, what does innovation mean to you and what do you do in this field?
In addition to being a very popular concept, we are witnessing that innovation is unfortunately used as a marketing tool that has been emptied.
First of all, I think that real innovation and the idea of the future are not things that companies can carry out on their own. For this reason, our belief is; To act in an understanding of stakeholder engagement with its academy, manufacturers and suppliers, start-ups, associations and even our competitors, and to create a leverage effect in this
context.
As a result of this understanding, I would like to talk about our “CUBIC – Innovation Center” at our Bühler Switzerland headquarter, which we opened in 2019. In this facility, which we have implemented with a budget of 50 million swiss francs, there are application laboratories of the technologies that include all Bühler’s business units in a 6’000 m2 closed area.
On the other hand, we work with world-leading universities and academics such as ETH, St. Gallen, EPFL, collaborative work and R&D groups, in a structure where we provide both
technological and financial support to more than 100 start-ups.
A study by Harvard University reveals that in major global crises, only 9 out of every 100 companies emerge from the crisis stronger. And the most important common thing that companies that can reach this 9% have done is investing in new technologies and innovation instead of budget constraints or downsizing.
In the global crisis environment created by the pandemic, Bühler has allocated a budget of 450 million francs for R&D and innovation in the last 2 years. As a result, we have introduced nearly 100 new technologies in many different fields in the last 2 years. We achieved this together. Reducing the energy spent in the fight against the climate crisis is one of the important points.
Could you please share with us the steps you have taken in this regard as Bühler?
Every day, 2 billion people each day enjoy foods produced on Bühler equipments and 1 billion people travel in vehicles partly produced with Bühler machinery every day.
65% of flour, 60% of chocolate, 50% of aluminum casting auto parts, 40% of packaging inks and 30% of automotive paints in the world are produced with Bühler technologies. As a brand that has such an impact on both the industry and the consumers, we feel directly responsible for nature.
For this reason, as Bühler, we have signed 7 main articles within the United Nations Sustainability Development goals that concern us. And for this, we work with all our strength and strive to achieve measurable and clear gains.
We set the target of working with 50% less waste, 50% less energy and 50% less water by 2050 in the manufacturing and also at use of our machines. We carry out our R&D studies and new technology projects in this direction. We have calculated the carbon footprints of all Bühler’s offices, service stations and roduction facilities worldwide. We are making investments to reduce them gradually.
Finally, could you please tell us about Bühler Turkey’s targets for the next period?
As of 2023, we are transforming our service center in İzmir Kemalpaşa into an application and training center at the same time. Our customers will have the chance to test and see our wet grinding technologies with their own products in this center.
In addition, both theoretical seminars and trainings and practical machine-technical trainings will be organized in this center. In addition, we are trying to meet to the needs
of our customers in the fastest and highest quality way by doubling our entire spare part warehouse, including grinding beads of all sizes.
Finally, as I mentioned before, we are in talks with various companies on new partnerships that will serve the global community from Turkey. We will share the developments through
your magazine.
