In this issue of our magazine, we had an interview with Croda Kimya’s Sales Manager, Ceren Binici, on important issues such as the structure of the company, R&D and innovation activities, and sustainability approach.
First of all, we would like to get to know you. Could you please tell us about your education
life, professional career, and personal interests?
I graduated from Middle East Technical University with a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering, I also have a Master degree in Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering from Politecnico di Milano in Italy.
Throughout my career, more than 13 years, I have worked at different multinational
chemical and biotechnology companies at various roles, covering different regions from West Europe, Middle East to Africa and recently, I joined Croda Kimya as Consumer Care Sector Sales Manager in July 2022.
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Ceren Binici[/caption]
Could you please give information about Croda Kimya’s history and milestones? What is the
current structure of Croda Kimya today, which regions do you operate in Turkey and abroad?
Croda Kimya is part of Croda, a Life Sciences and Consumer Care focused business who are the name behind sustainable, high-performance ingredients and technologies in some of the world’s most successful brands; creating, making, and selling speciality chemicals that are relied on by industries and consumers everywhere.
Croda Kimya was established in 2011, managing Black Sea and Mediterranean region, including not only Turkey but also Israel, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Georgia.
We are flexible and adaptable to the needs of local customers, providing innovative solutions as well as high levels of service, technical and regulatory support. Croda Kimya, we have 30 employees to serve our customer through our innovative solutions from our local stocks in Turkey.
With which products and services Croda Kimya creates solutions for its customers, could you please give detailed information?
Croda’s purpose is ‘Smart science to improve lives™’ and our smart science is found in products that touch our lives every day from life-saving pharmaceuticals and sun protection to crop yields and seed enhancement.
We are a focused Life Sciences and Consumer Care company. Consumer Care includes personal care and home care. This division brings together the businesses within Croda that sit closest to consumers, providing innovative and sustainable solutions
to manufacturers in home care, beauty and personal
care, and fragrance.
Another sector is Life Sciences which helps our customers by providing the highest
quality health care solutions, protecting crops and enhancing seeds.
Environmental sensitivity and sustainability issues have gained even more importance in recent years.
Could you please give some information about your views on these issues and your
approach as Croda Kimya?
As Croda, we are committed to be the most sustainable supplier of innovative ingredients, and we have a solid action plan in place to be Climate, Land and People positive by 2030.
From sourcing raw materials to transfer our products to customer, we are looking to minimize our impact on the environment by eliminating process waste and reducing our water use impact, carbon footprint and increase our use of bio-based raw material.
We are also improving the lives of people around the world by developing ingredients to improve health and wellbeing with the development of vaccines for some major diseases, but also help reduce instances of skin cancer through our Sun Care ingredient.
Last but not least, our crop innovations also help customers to mitigate the impact of climate change and land degradation, increasing the availability of land suitable for growing crops.
From the perspective of innovation and R&D, what kind of innovations do you offer to your
customers as Croda Kimya?
R&D is the core of our business at Croda, and we are very close to our customers to understand the industry’s needs and pains. We also work with global and regional associations to follow the trends so that we can create innovative solutions with our technology.
Our ingredients may have a small percentage of the finished products, however with these ingredients we deliver unique performance benefits that makes the difference at the end product. So, we will continue to find innovative solutions that industry needs and expect by being close to our customers and consumers.
What are the criteria Croda Kimya attaches importance to when creating investment plans?
Are you planning to invest for the short and long term?
Croda has a product portfolio to meet variety needs of the different industries we serve. We are specialized in innovative and differentiated technologies to add value to our customers.
Over the last few years, some of our acquisitions have included Iberchem and Parfex expanding our reach into high growth fragrance market and Alban Muller to enhance sustainable active ingredients portfolio for consumer in personal care markets.
We had also some acquisition at pharma industry, in 2021 our acquisition of Avani Polar Lipids completed, strengthening our Pharma division for next generation pharmaceuticals.
We also have partnership with regional technology companies, and here in Turkey we work together with Entekno Materials to focus on the development of a new particle technology
to deliver superior protection benefits to the sun care markets.
