Equipment Market - Interview
20.3.2015
Termokar Sales Manager Elif Eken: “With the investments we will make, 2015 and 2016 years will be full of surprises”
One of the prominent heat exchanger produce companies of Turkey, Termokar is a company established in İzmir Atatürk Organized Industrial Zone in 2004, producing heat exchangers. We have an interview with Termokar Sales Manager Elif Eken who says that Termokar, keeping growth among its main goals since the year it was established, reached the aimed growth figures in 2011, it moved to its new plant having 11.000 m2 closed area over 17,500 m2 total area in March 2012 with its new structuring and thus doubled its production capacity.
Termokar from past to today
Termokar is a company which carries on business in air conditioning sector, which specialised in water system and gas system heat exchanger production and which has a 10 year experience. The establishment story of Termokar starts in 2004 in İzmir. As a result of the joint venture of two investors one of which is the owner of the most prestigious construction company in construction sector in İzmir and the other one of which is influential in the sector in plastic injection mold business, Termokar was established with the purpose of creating a company open for improvement that will do business in air conditioning sector, fill the gap in the sector concerning quality and economical product production and that will provide employment area in Aegean Region. In the first years of our establishment, we made a fast entrance into the sector with our 30 persons experienced employees with finned tube heat exchanger production. In that period, we were working with two main customers and one of these and maybe the most important one was Teba company. As a result of Teba leaving the sector in 2005, our company take part in several fair organizations at home and abroad in order to fill this gap and especially focused on marketing activities to abroad. Happily, we gained recognition due to our product quality and company structure. While we made our first break-out with our 25 customers in 2005, we made our second break-out by moving to our new plant premises which have 10.000 m2 production area located in Manisa Organized Industrial Zone in 2012 and we increased the number of our customers over 100. In those years, we achieved to increase our target customer number and to fill our production capacity focusing on customer satisfaction. In he end, we felt the requirement of making investments in new machinery and molds. We passed this process shoulder to shoulder with our 150 persons staff. What is the most gratifying is that we didn’t lose a customer we gained. Now, Termokar has 13 engineers and 200 employees in total.
Our philosophy is being “accessible at any moment”
The whole of our organization takes place in our Manisa plant premises. In addition, we carry out our sales-marketing activities in our Manisa plant centrally via a European responsible. We provide service for our all domestic and foreign customers with our sales team composed of 5 people. We have 60 active customers for which we provide service and we enable over 100 customers to have our products. The most important factor that lies behind our this success is that all Termokar employees provide service with the principle of being “accessble at any moment”. There is not an executive in Termokar that cannot be reached. If the subject is quality, you can directly connect to Quality Manager, if the subject is production, you can immediately speak with Production Manager. This system has been achieved to function by creating a “high quality employee” profile. Our goal is to carry out our activities in a shorter time without decreasing the quality of our services.
We also have stepped into energy sector, we will also make other surprises this year
Our plant, located in Manisa Organized Industrial Zone 4. Section, have 10.000 m2 production area over 17.500 total area. Production of our all products is carried out under ISO 9001:2008 Quality Assurance System. Our annual production volume is 3,5 million m2. Our products have Eurovent Certification. Our production groups can be basically defined as water system heater-cooler Coils, vapour Coils, evaporator and condenser Coils and convector heater Coils that are called heat exchanger. Additionally, we carry out production and sales of vehicle air conditioning systems, showcase/bottle cooler systems, air conditioning evaporators and condensers and heat tube Coils, air-cooled evaporators and condensers for heat recovery systems. Aside from our heat exchanger product that we produce for vehicle air conditioning systems, there is also natural convection heater convector production line for autobus group.
In addition to air conditioning sector, we have also started to provide service in energy sector and we produced our first dry cooler product in 2014. We have greater goals in this area for 2015. We have set goals regarding different sectors. We are going through a both joyous and busy process. We will share its results with the sector in 2016. 2016 and 2017 will the be the years that we will speak of as the third break-out of Termokar. Our R&D efforts of 2015 have started. Works relating to production of new products and projects that are now in draft are being carried out in the R&D department that have been established in our organization. We will have surprises this year.
We carry out prestigious projects
Our products take place in prestigious projects both in our country and in several countries of the world. For instance, all heat exchangers of Adnan Menderes Airport project are Termokar products. Likewise, 1200 heat exchangers that we sold to a global customer of ours, that were used in 6 training and research general hospital in Iraq that will carry out activity in Karbala, Babil, Basra, Amarah, Nasiriyah and Kut cities, are production of Termokar plant. Up to today, we, as Termokar, have carried out numerous foreign project. We sold 54 pieces of 200kW copper finish heat exchangers to a French customer for its a special project in Spain. In addition to working with our Turkish customers, the advantage of working with customers who are leaders their fields in the world is that it both enables us to gain experience in very different projects and to always keep alive the abroad alternatives in continuously changing domestic market conditions.
As Termokar, we certainly attend some organizations in order to follow the development of the sector we are in and to be able tos hare what we acquired with our customers. We absolutely participate in Chillventa Exhibition organized in Nuremberg every two years, Mostra Convegno Exhibition organized in Milan every two years and Sodex Fair that is organized in Turkey. In addition, we have participated in ISH Frankfurt Exhibition this year as visitor.
Seeing the population and interest in ISH exhibition which is one of the important fairs in our sector made us very glad. We had the chance to meet both with our domestic and foreign customers. Seeing our products in our customers’ stands was really pleasing.
We have also visited Eurasia Rail Exhbition this year for the first time. Increasing interest of foreign producers in Turkey, projects that are planned to be carried out in our country and developments in this area are very exciting.
2015 will be a year full of opportunities for Termokar
Air conditioning is a sector that has a trend of increasing and for which positive evaluations are being made in late years. Investments made in construction sector and energy sector in Turkey affect our business positively. In addition, we have seen a dynamism in construction sector with the influence of private sector rather that public sector in 2014. We again know that there will be new investments in both energy and construction sector in domestic market in 2015. Government assistance is also very important in this matter. For instance, investments made for “rail systems”, a very different line of work, create opportunities for us as well. 2014 was a tough year but we achieved our goals. It was tough because we had set a goal to increase our domestic market share. In spite of our customer profile that is affected from economic and political developments in our country, we made active sales in invested areas and achieved our goals in the 3rd quarter of the year. However, especially because of increasing domestic competition, there was a problem concerning profitability. At the same time, we have a cost structure that affected both by the change in foreign exchange rate and by the prices in LME copper exchange. Due cost increases reflecting to prices, achieving desired goals in profitability was hard for us in 2014. In addition, the decrease trend in copper prices for the last 2 years was a great obstacle in front of achieving our target sales volume. We expect that the decrease trend in copper will continue in 2015 as well.
However, the figures we obtained from our activities in abroad were satisfying for us but we have increased our goals in this area in 2015. We have determined 2015 and 2016 as the years of investments with which we will achieve these great goals.
Apperantly, our customers expect a lot from us. We are planning to carrying out new project with the support of R&D to increase our product range both for the expectations of our customers and for the future of our company. 2015 will be a year when this type of companies will kind of survive. Even though increasing petrol prices and increase in exchange rate of dollar and the consequent negative influence on Euro/USD parity in parallel to this are challenge us, our goal is firstly to decrease our own costs and arrange our price policy according to customer expectation. We see that growing in world economy has generally slow down. There is a 3% growth expectation for 2015. In addition, it is estimated that the growth in construction sector in Turkey will be 4-5% in 2015. Because it creates driving force in a majör part of our businesses, we estimate 7-8% growth in air conditioning sector in parallel with potential amount of work. Due to uncertainties in money markets and disturbances in Russia and Middle East, it is hard to make a realistic estimation but our primary goal is to protect our market share in air conditioning sector and most importantly to find new busisnesses in other sectors. In summary, we think that 2015 will be a tough year but full of oppotunities for Termokar.
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