Okan Erdeve
ECF Engineering, General Coordinator
How was the year 2019 for your company in consideration of your sector and Turkey in particular?
As you know, as ECF Engineering, we deal with contract works in Industrial Electrical Systems.The primary sectors we work with are cement and mining industries. In general, our works are long-term projects over a year. In 2019, mostly we continued our works remaining from 2018, and tried to create our projections for the year 2020 in 2019. Despite the year 2020 presently seems to be developing below our expectations in terms of sectoral investments, we still have new contract works for this year. We were aware that 2019 was going to be a difficult year – a year of
maintaining existing assets; indeed, it turned out so. In comparison to past years, we did not accomplished our target turnover and profit expectations; however yet, being in a better position comparing to the overall market held our motivation at high levels. We started the year 2020 by revising our conditions and measures and determining our priorities according to recently occurred situations.
What are the developments of your company in this year, such as investments, new products, launchings, etc.?
In 2019, we realized a very important dream of ours. By utilization of only our funds, we completed and put into operation the logistics and production facility in Ankara Anadolu Organized Industrial Zone, a facility comprising a production area of 1700 m2 and office area of 700 m2, totaling 2400 m2 covered space on a land of 4000 m2. Presently, we are happy and excited for this. We tried to develop ourselves by always aiming for the better in contract works. Observing the works we completed and delivered in the past seven years, we believe we do our job very well. We observed that the most important source of this business is the team spirit by bringing together, particularly personnel, mutual trust and respect, qualified labor, logistics, and skill of efficient use of time. We always think of how to improve it much more. We are entering to industry and manufacturing in particular anticipating that our experiences will contribute to development of our country and company. We are at our current position by providing services; now, it is time producing value-added products besides services. Our aim is to manufacture Low-Voltage Drawer Distribution Switchboards of high standards of usage and reliability that are used in special industrial projects. We do our best to start manufacturing such systems, on which engineering and qualified labor is used highly efficiently, as soon as possible and become an important player in the sector. For our objective, negotiations presently are under way and about to the point of understanding with a domestic company.
In general, what are your expectations in 2020? What are your targets and general strategies for this year?
2020 will be an important and active year; 2019 was a year when countries fought hardly for positioning themselves, even if not in terms of global economic activities. What I mean by positioning is about which countries will have the power and how they will dominate the world. We witness wars and bloodsheds in Middle East and Northern Africa. We all observe what kind of criminal methods the global powers apply by completely ignoring lives of people and territorial integrities just to maintain their presence in the region, to dominate the energy and mining resources therein that the world needs. Even though the geopolitical location of our country and the mission it assume in the region wear and exhaust our economy, I believe that all will cause positive progresses in the short term. Concordantly, I think that economic activities and exports will increase in 2020. We know and follow that there are projects expected for realization in cement and mining industries both in Turkey and Africa as well as in the surrounding geography. One of our objectives is to take part in such important projects as both producer and contracting company.
What sectoral developments do you expect this year?
As I said earlier, we are mainly in cement sector and then, in mining. In consideration of the domestic market, cement sector presently operates at half capacity rates due to surplus supply, and is regressed in profits comparing to the past years. Such regression, in my opinion, brings forward two issues along for proceeding to ahead. The first one is turning to exports and new markets; that this in turn requires strategic partnerships and investments wherever in the global market you want to be; the second is such new investments to increase profitability and reduce energy input costs being a substantial denominator in the sector. Both these issues are the subjects that quick decisions must be reached on and applied, and we think that the realization ratio thereof will be high within this year. Cement sector always undulates in this country, and in my opinion, the sector is very skilled to take action in line with its experiences in past.
As far as I follow, I do not think there will be substantial investments in the mining sector this year. Our country does not have great experience in mineral explorations and mining subjects. However, I known that mineral reservoirs and mining areas are largely mapped. The sector needs global investors, and unfortunately, we easily lose important investors because of the reactions arising from Environmental Impact Assessment (“EIA”) procedures. However, despite this unfavorable outlook, several projects are waiting their start this year.