In our pleasant conversation with Murat Öztürk, the founder and CEO of Seluz Fragrance & Flavor Company, which is one of the fastest-growing fragrance and flavor companies in the world, succeeded to become the export leader in the ‘Fragrance Chemicals Export’ category for the fourth time in a row, we explore more about the company’s founding story, as well as the secrets of its success, the ongoing flavor investments and R&D projects.
Could you tell our readers about your personal history and the founding story of Seluz?
I was born in Germany in 1972. Following my undergraduate education, I began to work at a company in Switzerland, which would produce fragrances. Afterward, we started to import fragrances from Europe to Turkey.
During this period, I saw that Turkey would rise to a position of greater importance within the region and that Turkey should have a modern production facility in accordance with European standards. With our own know-how, in 2007, we transformed our modest two-floor building in Hadımköy into a production facility and first started with trial productions.
After our small-scale test productions proved successful, we increased the number of our products and market share day after day with the support of our customers. In 2010,
we started the construction of our modern factory with high technology infrastructure, which we had always dreamed of, on our own land in Silivri, and completed this investment
with 100% equity.
It can be said that our new ‘Flavor Production & R&D Center, which we have been investing in through several years, is the latest product of this commitment. Our R&D, Production, and Management campus in Silivri, which covers the fragrance and flavor business areas, is over 40 thousand square meters in total, thus we have invested a total of 70 million dollars in our complex up to this date, and we continue to grow and consolidate our operations.
In addition to my role at
Seluz, I continue to serve the sector as an Assembly Member of the Istanbul Chamber of Industry, and as a Board Member of İKMİB (Istanbul Chemicals and Chemical Products Exporters’ Association).
I am a person who has internalized all the values that represent my origins and homeland and clings to these values even when away from Turkey. On the other hand, I can say that growing up in Germany and starting business life in Europe contributes to you in terms of business culture and discipline.
Also, I would like to add that I have benefited greatly from being able to combine the discipline, which is a very decisive element of the German business culture, with the speed and agility, nourished by our Turkish culture.
What would you like to say about your company? How would you define the criteria for your success policy?
Thanks to our perfectionist and customer-oriented philosophy, as well as our determination in business, despite our young age, we managed to become one of the fastest growing fragrance and flavor companies in the world.
With our vision based upon ‘global growth’ since the day we were founded and the ‘value-added products’ where creativity is a must, our investments in qualified human resources and cutting-edge technology continue to increase with each day.
The key criteria for Seluz’s success are to closely monitor the trends in the markets around the world regarding the main categories within our sector, to be able to foresee customer needs, to be a solution partner beyond being just a supplier for the customer, and to be the spearhead of the sector with the contribution to innovation and development.
I suppose that many of our customers believe that our company uses all R&D and solution resources to the fullest with respect to their cooperation with Seluz, and sincerity and
mutual trust form the basis of our customer relations.
Which sectors do you target especially? What types of products do you offer?
Thanks to the inspiration we get from the most special moments in life and the unique richness of nature, we combine our creativity with technology to bring the most special
fragrances and tastes to life.
We can say that our solutions in the field of fragrances are used in all products in the sub-groups of 3 main categories. The first of these is the ‘fine fragrance’, that is, the perfume category, which functions as the locomotive of our business.
The second main category is the personal care segment, which consists of many product sub-groups such as haircare, skincare, baby care, and wet wipes. And finally, we can say the category of homecare, which has sub-groups such as detergents, surface cleaners, and ambient scents.
These, in fact, constitute the main areas of use of our fragrances. However, with the
technology developing, it can be argued that innovative areas of use for fragrances have emerged in many new areas, ranging from textiles to chemistry.
As to the flavor sector, we currently exist in the food categories which is present in every area of our lives. Although there are many sub-categories in this sector, but we can list
the most important areas of use for the flavors we have developed together as follows:
Under the beverages category, hot beverages such as tea and coffee, carbonated drinks,
ice tea and ice coffee, fruit drinks, nectars, syrups, energy drinks, and malt beverages; hard and soft candy, fudge and chocolate under the confectionery category; pudding, ice
cream, milky drinks, milky desserts, fruit yogurt and kefir under the main category of dairy products; and finally, biscuits, cakes, wafers, croissants, and cookies under the
bakery products category.
Last year was a year in which the impacts of the pandemic were felt intensely, and these impacts are still in effect. How has your company been affected by this situation?
The Covid-19 pandemic is said to be the worst global disaster in terms of health and economy that humanity has ever faced since World War II. The years 2020 and 2021 were a difficult period for the whole world, both socially, a humanitarian perspective, and economically.
Despite the fact that the effects of the pandemic are somewhat still in force today, it is pleasing that its current course is positive. While the world economy and global trade went through a tough period in the shade of the pandemic in 2021, the Turkish chemical industry became the second-largest exporter of Turkey with exports worth 25.4 billion dollars.
In the first wave of the pandemic, the closure of many factories for a long period in the perfume category, which is the most value-added business area for us in many countries where we export products, adversely affected our targets.
However, due to the increase in production of cleaning and hygiene products, there has been an increase in the fragrances used in these categories, and we have achieved the export leadership in the field of fragrances in 2020 and 2021, and we are proud to be the export leader for four consecutive years.
In the field of food flavors, which we had started to invest in before, our R&D and production technology investments continued despite the conditions imposed by the pandemic.
We have increased the number of our employees, most of which are in the research and development department, and I would like to underline that this is also an important
investment.
Although many sectors were deeply affected by the pandemic, we observed that no serious bottlenecks have occurred in the market, especially in the production and sale of packaged food, and even significant growth in several sub-categories. We are delighted to fulfill the objectives we projected with regard to the production and sale of flavors.
How important is R&D for your company? Could you please tell us about the R&D projects you carried out recently?
As Turkish companies, I always emphasize that Research and Development studies that will increase the competitiveness of the world and create added value for our national economy while developing the sector strategies both in flavor and fragrance are very important and that investments should be made.
I believe that creativity, design value, and all innovation efforts will increase the added value produced by the sectors and our competitiveness with other countries higher. For this reason, R&D is a very critical issue for us; we continue to invest incessantly in both technology and our employees in order to develop and become the best-inclass. Thanks to the investments we have made so far, we have laboratories that are rare and unprecedented.
In 2017, our Research and Development facilities were granted the status of a legal R&D center where our innovation projects are supervised and supported by the Ministry of Science, Industry and Technology of the Republic of Turkey.
We are very proud of this achievement, and it motivated and provided us with an opportunity to accelerate our R&D activities even more. According to global and regional market trends, we continue to develop new formulas and applications, taking into account customer needs.
Also, let me emphasize that 60 percent of all our human resources are employed in our R&D center. We have 18 active R&D studies, some of which are on flavors and some on fragrances.
To give the main title of a few of them; titled Horizon 2020, Functionalized Tomato
Products project. There are a total number of 16 partners from different countries in this project. We are one of the 5 partners in Turkey. We take part in the work package where
the sensory analyzes of the project will be made.
We also have an ongoing nationally supported TAGEM project, which covers the production of vegetable protein isolates from industrial by-products and their use in pilots and industrial scale soft candy production. We are executing this project together with the university and our business partners.
The development of a gum base with the intended characteristics by using different gum bases and examining the profiles and functional properties of powdered turmeric turmeric flavor in chewing gum, the development of the recipe and process of soft candy based on pectin with added vegetable protein, and the development of flavored mineral water with the addition of ACDE vitamins to support immunity are among our other projects which we feel enthusiastic about.
What is your outlook at technology as a company?
Working and producing with cutting-edge technology is crucial for us to stick to our perfectionist approach and to obtain reliable results. The fact that we have modern facilities with the latest technological infrastructure is one of the key reasons why companies from all over the world choose us as their business partner.
In 2011, we founded Seluz as the first fully integrated robotic fragrance production facility
of Turkey and the Middle East, and we continue to invest in constantly advancing technology and to follow the latest innovations.
In our fragrance production plant, where cuttingedge technology is the most decisive factor in all phases, supported by highly automated robots, the most unique components offered by nature and science are blended through fully automated and integrated processes.
Our flexible and large-scale production robots and tanks allow rapid production and delivery of customer needs ranging from 25 kg to 5 tons. As for our flavor production and R&D center, we are able to produce liquid and powder flavors in a short time, without human touch, on the production lines that incorporate the latest technologies available in the world.
As the first and only company in Turkey that is able to employ automatic dosing from 0.05 grams to 5 tons on fully automated robotic lines, we also distinguish ourselves from our competitors in terms of technology.
Although some of these technologies originate from Europe, we have developed a significant part of them in Turkey. Among them, there are the proud examples that we have developed together with our Turkish business partners and Turkish mechanical engineers, such as our huge Spray Drying Tower.
Could you please tell us about social responsibility projects initiated or led by your company, if any?
As one of the leading companies that continue to grow and improve in Turkey, we have always cared about and supported social responsibility projects. Although we are not
very keen on sharing social responsibility projects in print or social media in line with our company culture, let me briefly talk about a few of these.
As part of our project titled “Let’s Drink Healthy Water and Protect Nature”, we started
a new era in our company where we drink water with our glass bottles in order to consume water in a nature-friendly and healthier way.
We drink water with Seluz glass bottles which we presented to our employees as gifts, and we fight against plastic pollution for our future, together with our employees. I would also like to point out that donations were made to LÖSEV for each glass bottle.
In the past, we established Science Laboratories in total 8 Elementary Schools, 5 ones at the first stage and 3 later, as part of the social responsibility project initiated in coordination with PLAT (Private Label Association of Turkey).
As part of our project that we initiated in collaboration with the teachers and trainees of Yozgat Çayıralan Public Education Center, we produced 18 of Anatolia’s endemic plants
with the traditional silk point lace method in order to both show support for women’s labor and revitalize a disappearing craft.
Thus, we launched the Seluz “Endemics of Turkey” library, which includes endemics studies compiled from all around the world. This library is open to access for all academic research purposes.
In the early months of the pandemic, which required much more social sensitivity and responsibility than usual, we supplied a significant number of surgical masks and cleaning products as these were the basic needs, regardless of whether we primarily focused on producing these items, and delivered them to public institutions and households in
nearby settlements free of charge.
As a part of these efforts, along with many cleaning and aid materials, 30 tons of disinfectant were produced by Seluz and delivered to the places needed free of charge.
We will accept that acting with awareness on social responsibility as one of our most primary principles, and we will continue to carry out many other social responsibility projects that connect with people, the environment, and the society, and will continue our activities in this scope.
Could you tell us about your goals for the next years? What kind of innovations will take place in your company in the coming years?
There is a specific point we emphasized in the founding motivation of Seluz Flavor; we are a company that believes in the strength of Turkey. We aim to become one of the world’s
leading fragrance and flavor companies, as we are preparing for the 100th anniversary of our republic.
Considering that some of these companies across the world were founded in the 1800s and have been establishing dominance ever since as major players, we can say that this achievement would be a significant success. Our vision and dynamic approach have distinguished us as one of the fastest-growing fragrance and flavor companies across the world.
In order to achieve our goal, we need to grow twice as much, and for this reason, we continue to invest in our business and our employees at full speed. Currently, the second phase of our food flavor R&D and production plant is underway, the first phase of which had already been completed.
We aim to close 2022 with a growth rate of 30%, and a turnover of 85 million dollars. For 2023, we are targeting a turnover of 100 million dollars in total, of which 80 million dollars will be from the fragrance sector, while 20 million dollars will be brought in from the flavor sector.
In this competitive atmosphere in the industrial fragrance and flavor sectors, we have no doubt that we will achieve this target with our team spirit and our passion for our work, without compromising any of our working principles.
