Bozzetto Kimya General Manager
Salih Kalyoncu
“2019 was a year in which we decided to invest in capacity expansion. Since the products we produce are medium and high technology products, there are very serious incentives for investment decisions. With these incentives, we are targeting the close export market and we managed to draw the group’s decision of growth to Turkey. “
Can you briefly tell us about the foundation story of Bozzetto Group and your activities?
Bozzetto was founded in 1919; that is, a century-old company founded 101 years ago by Giovanni Bozzetto, the elder of the Bozzetto family, in Bergamo, Italy. In the years when the company was first established, its main field of activity was to produce chemicals with the technology and knowledge at that time. In 1975, they start to produce super fluidifiers, plasticizers and phosphonates based on NSF (Naphthalene Sulphonate) for both construction and textile industries. At the time, these products were very new technologies. With the quality it has achieved in these products, it gradually begins to make an impact in the world and make its name heard, and thus, it starts to open new production factories in different geographies. The company is starting the globalization process. America, China, Germany, Indonesia, Poland, Spain, Peru and Turkey are the countries where the grroup participated with 100% capital.
The production plant in Turkey was opened in 1999 in Tire / Izmir. Turkey is very important for Bozzetto Group. Because management and administration for our customers located in Middle East, Northern Africa and Central Asia is done from Turkey due to its location. We export to about 50 countries from Turkey. In this way, Turkey is the group’s 2nd largest company.
You produce auxiliary chemicals for many sectors such as textile, leather, construction, cosmetics, detergent and agriculture. How many people are employed in the company? Can you describe your organizational structure?
Bozzetto Kimya, although its production and main field of activity is NSF (Naphthalene Sulphonate), today operates in 3 different sectors with an almost equal turnover. These sectors are; Construction Chemicals, Textile Chemicals and Performance Chemicals (Detergent, Energy, Agriculture, Cosmetics).
We perform this organization with a team of approximately 120 people within the company and with our dealer structures. Our management staff consists of 8 people and we have a young and dynamic executive staff with an average age of 39.
Due to the fact that the products produced are medium and high technology, we work with a dynamic team specializing in their fields, both our white collar and blue collar personnel consist of people who have developed themselves in their fields.
R&D is one of the most important fields. This team consists of staff with at least a doctorate degree.
Our sales team consists of people, each with experience in their own sector.
Can you tell us about your company’s service and product portfolio? What are your featured products or product groups?
Our company has 3 main fields of activity. In the construction group, we have superplasticizers, textile auxiliaries and performance chemicals, agricultural, detergent, water chemicals, cosmetic chemicals and our patented product groups with high know-how in the energy sector.
Economic fluctuations in 2019 had a negative impact on the business life in our country. Can you evaluate 2019 in terms of both your industry and your company?
It is normal to have correction years in the economy by years. Even if you do everything right, it is a healthy situation to have fluctuations in between. Not counting the effects of the global crisis in 2008 on Turkey, Turkey’s economy was going through a growth trend for nearly 20 years since the beginning of the 2000s. As we can guess, the area we were most affected was the domestic construction chemicals.
Firstly, we approached this incident by accepting that this situation was temporary. In other words, we did not take any action that would cause a decrease in employment or capacity. The biggest plus of having a balanced portfolio comes to the fore at such times. You can compensate for the fall in one area in other sectors. Apart from that, we put export alternatives on the table and increased the exports almost four times. We did this in a year when the domestic cement consumption in Turkey fell 38-40% compared to the previous year. We closed the year by increasing the production and sales of raw materials we produced for the construction chemicals sector by 8%.
We can say that we turned the crisis into an opportunity. Currently, we continue to sell in the export markets in 2019 as well as in 2020. In addition, 2019 was a year in which we decided to invest in capacity expansion. Since the products we produce are medium and high technology products, there are very serious incentives for investment decisions. With these incentives, we managed to draw the growth decision of group to Turkey for the sales opportunities to close export markets.
What are your characteristics that differentiate you from your competitors in the sectors you are in?
The most important feature that distinguishes Bozzetto Group from competitors is that the raw materials used in the final products produced by the group are produced by the group. The group is the world’s largest producer of raw materials in the textile auxiliary chemicals industry.
Bozzetto Group sells its patented product groups to its end customers. As Bozzetto Chemicals we started work to become and R&D center in Turkey as of 2020 on an area of 850m² . We support all product groups with our application laboratory. Our personnel in the technical product group provide technical support to all our customers from the Far East to the USA.
What kind of structure do you have for sales, marketing and after sales services?
Our sales team consists of people with experience in their industry. Currently we are sending all of the products produced in Bozzetto Chemical Tire production facilities to all regions of Turkey. However, for us, the sale is not to create the delivery note and dispatch the product and then send the invoice. Whether the produced product creates added value for the customer is very important for us. For this reason, we have close relationships with our business partners thanks to both our dealer networks and our direct sales staff.
In our 300 m² application laboratory and 100 m² R&D laboratory, we examine samples from our customers and we are trying to respond to requests. For more specific issues, we occasionally use the group’s central R&D and application laboratories in Italy in line with our customers’ needs.
In particular, we constantly keep technical staff in the chemicals we produce for the energy sector to provide instant controls at our customers’ facilities.
We will finish the first quarter of 2020 in a very short time. What are your expectations from 2020?
I answered this question very comfortably while we were starting our company’s budget. It was very easy to say that Turkey with a growing economy as of 2019 would also grow at least 5% in 2020. Already the first quarter results justified me.
But the pandemic we experience today makes many things uncertain. I think that the economic decisions made by our country and other countries will be enough to ensure that the trade does not stop. But my primary wish is that this situation will return to normal as soon as possible and people will start their comfortable and peaceful lives again.
