Hakan Gülseren / Onbiron Group Companies Co-Founder
“The terrifying disaster we experienced on February 6th has overwhelmed us all as a whole country and has affected us very deeply. I wish Allah’s mercy to all our people who lost their lives, to all our living creatures, speed recovery to our wounded and patience to all our people who have lost their relatives, may Allah help us. Even though it is very difficult to talk about business in such an environment while we are still suffering, of course, it is a debt of humanity for all of us to analyze and understand the lessons to be learned from these disasters very well and to fulfill our responsibilities in the best way possible without wasting time. As an important part of the chain of responsibility in the construction sector, we have to create strong bridges. In this direction, it is exactly for these purposes that we thoroughly analyze the needs of our customers in target markets. We take it as a goal to be a long-term and reliable business partner of our customers by developing solutions tailored to their needs. We aim to put innovative projects into practice by producing high-performance and financially viable products with our R&D teams.”
Could you tell us about the establishment, companies, structure and activities of Onbiron Group in general?
Today, we have 5 companies under the name Onbiron and a newly established JV (joint venture) company. We first established our Onbiron Yapı company in 2016. Later on, Onbiron Mikronize was established in 2018. Founded in 2019, Onbiron Kimya was born and grew up during the pandemic era. We established Onbiron Global at the end of 2021 and Onbiron Endüstriyel and HMA-Onbiron at the end of 2022.
Although these companies meet the definition of Group Companies, they are completely independent companies established with different partnership structures, and they make decisions and act independently in the sectors in which they operate.
While establishing these companies, we have appointed our colleagues, whose experience and business ethics we trust and have worked with for many years, who are specialized in each of them, as company partners and managers, so that we have already entrusted them to safe hands who will carry our companies into the future while trying to evaluate the rewards of their knowledge and efforts in the best way.
Onbiron Yapı is a construction company that responds to the industrial construction needs of our other companies and specializes in building industrial structures, especially in the field of chemistry.
Onbiron Micronize Mineraller is an R&D based company established to produce value-added products primarily for the construction chemicals, cement and concrete sectors as a result of crushing calcite and other minerals, grinding them and cement at very low micron sizes and mixing them with each other. Our micronized calcite products are predominantly used in industries such as paint, plastic, paper and construction chemicals.
Onbiron Kimya was established in order to contribute to the reduction of our current account deficit to some extent by bringing products that are not produced in our country but have areas of use to our sector. The raw materials such as anti-foaming, water reducer and consistency preservative, which we have developed and produced for this purpose, are widely used in the cement and concrete chemicals sector.
Onbiron Global was established in order to provide fast and effective solutions by identifying the chemical raw material needs of our customers. It has a corporate structure specializing in chemical raw material trade as a link of the supply chain. Our goals are to provide effective and R & D based innovative solutions for the supply of raw materials to our customers, especially in the Construction Chemicals sector, and to contribute to the continuity of production with the stock strength in certain product groups.
We have returned to the cement chemicals sector, which is our field of expertise, with our Onbiron Industrial Chemicals company. Our aim is to come to the forefront with products that will have a direct impact on reducing the carbon dioxide footprint, which is one of the current goals of the cement sector, and that enable cement production with less clinker ratio and lower specific energies.
Do you attach importance to R&D and Product Development activities in your companies, what are your products and services that stand out in this direction, could you tell us a little bit?
Especially our industrial, micronized and chemistry companies have a strong R&D infrastructure. Our products, developed by our studies, have already found application areas in sectors such as construction chemicals, ready mixed concrete, reactive concrete, precast concrete and cement, and their usage amounts are increasing day by day. For example; in addition to grinding calcite at Micronize Mineraller, we are working to bring new and high added value products to the sector with our product groups like MineraCem ® and MikroCem.
MineraCem is an innovative product group that can be used in Construction Chemicals, Cement and Concrete sectors obtained by grinding various minerals in different particle distributions, processing them with chemicals and mixing them.
On the other hand, MicroCem is a new product group with very high added value and performance, obtained by grinding cement with high performance grinding aids at very high Blaine values (>10k cm2/g) and combining it with various minerals and chemicals. It can be widely used in products such as injection and repair mortars, high-performance technical mortars, ultra-high-performance concrete, reactive powder concrete, prefabricated concrete, micro concrete, as well as in filling and reinforcing soil, rock and concrete micro-cracks in important projects such as tunnels, mines and dams.
We have succeeded in producing new generation grinding facilitator raw materials with high-performance polymer derivatives that can preserve their structure without deteriorating due to the effect of heat and impact, which we are developing at Onbiron Kimya.
Thanks to our “WRGA series” high-performance grinding facilitator and water-reducing products that we developed at Onbiron Endüstriyel Kimyasallar company as a result of our R&D studies, it will now be possible to produce cements with low water needs and high additives in the cement industry. In this way, we can increase the concrete performance in Cem II and Cem III type cements (compressive strength, consistency and consistency protection properties) and increase them to the level of Cem I type cement.
Which are your most preferred products in the cement sector? Which companies do you mainly work with?
Nowadays, due to the fact that energy costs have increased a lot, high-performance grinding facilitators that provide an increase in capacity in cement production and strength enhancers that allow reducing the clinker ratio are preferred by our customers. In addition, our WRGA series special grinding facilitators, which can reduce the water requirement of blended cement types (Cem II and Cem III) in concrete, have also started to be in demand in the cement sector.
Although it has only been a short period of time, such as 5 months, since the establishment of our company, we have started working with large group factories that have entered the top 10 in cement production in the world and in our country in a very short time. We receive positive feedback from every factory that tries our products, and we rank first among the best products.
As a group, you also have an overseas structuring. Can you tell us about the work you carry out in global terms?
Finally, our joint venture (JV) company HMA-Onbiron, which we established, was established for the purpose of selling and marketing all our products that we manufacture and trade in Türkiye, especially in Iraq and Middle Eastern countries.
R&D studies and innovation practices are at the forefront in your fields. How do you shape your work in these areas?
We are committed to creating an innovation-oriented culture. We analyze the target market and customer needs in a comprehensive manner. We aim to establish long-term business partnership with our customers by developing special solutions for their needs.
We take it as a goal to implement innovative projects by producing high[1]performance and financially viable products with our R&D teams.
Green and environmentally friendly production issues are on the agenda a lot in the cement sector and the infrastructures are constantly being revised accordingly. Are there any special solutions that you offer in these areas?
Our mission as a company is always to make people our focal point. As is known, cement production is responsible for about 8% of the carbon footprint in the world and this rate is over 10% in Türkiye. Our negotiations have started with cement manufacturers in order to develop products that will directly reduce their carbon footprint and apply them to systems.
Could you tell us about your general sustainability policies?
Fulfilling the conditions provided by the member participants of the United Nations global compact and signing the “Global Compact” agreement, which we have been a member of in our previous companies, is our main goal and policy we have set in the name of sustainability.
Would you tell us about your general strategies and goals for 2023?
We will try to be worthy of the trust that our customers place in us once again by using our accumulations obtained from our past technical, commercial and operational experiences in this newly established company of ours.
In addition, by aiming to be one of the strongest links of the sectors we are in, it will be our priority to become one of the companies that especially direct the cement chemical sector.