Tevfik Kemal AYATA
Cement Group Country Manager
GCP Turkey
2016 has been a very difficult year for our country and economy in various aspects. Although the official figures have yet to be released, the Turkish cement production in 2016 caught up with 2015 levels and reached 73 million metric tons despite the political instability in our neighboring countries and the deep reflections of the increasing exchange rate pressure. On the other hand, GCP Turkey Cement Group enjoyed very important developments in 2016. In the first quarter of 2016, GCP Turkey became one of GCP Global’s most important management centers in the world and thus enjoyed a very busy work schedule due to the responsibility, excitement, and targets that came from being a regional center. At GCP Turkey Cement Group, we are proud and happy to have completed many cement additive projects with our work partners; to have helped our customers with resistance goals, clinker reduction, and tonnage increase; and to have achieved these targets all together. I would like to express my thanks to all our partners who see us as their fellow associates especially in our projects and who have worked with us to make things better in all stages from lab optimization efforts to field tests and cost studies.
First of all, we expect 2017 to be a critical year for the Turkish cement sector. With the recently opened factories and the factories that are expected to begin production in the second half of 2017, the established capacity reached almost over 90 million metric tons. New projects to be announced by the public and the private sector; weather conditions for the first three months; political business cycles; and, most importantly, the ongoing critical exchange rate pressure; as well as the relevant measures to be taken by the Central Bank and the private sector for this very pressure will be the determinant factors of this year. The most important sector issues in 2017 will be the measures that the Central Bank will take in the upcoming days in order to govern the exchange rate pressure, as well as these measures’ effects on the construction sector. We will live and see how much the Central Bank will increase the base rate of interest and how the interest weapon used will affect the middle and long term interest rates, in particular the mortgage rates, in the short and middle term. Despite all of these issues, I believe 2017 can witness to a production level of 73-76 million metric tons thanks to the internal sector dynamics and new projects to be announced by the second half of the year. However, new factories and the increasing production capacity will significantly increase the sales and profit pressure on cement producers.
But of course the increasing national competition and the efforts to search for new markets will increase the importance of the cement additive chemicals with each passing day. Producing more cement in a certain unit of time, reducing clinker, and getting one step ahead in the competition by increasing the early strength and 28 day resistance will be the most important factors for all producers when it comes to their annual business goals. As was the case in 2016, GCP Turkey will continue in 2017 to add value to all its partners and help produce the best cement with minimum energy and maximum quality by working on a project basis. Our state of the art ESE, XT, and XN series that we produced thanks to our R&D work carried out in 2016 helped us leave behind a very successful year something what our 150 year old history and leader position setting the standards of the market are worthy of. We concluded 2016 with great accomplishments and record sales, and our cement team is looking forward to provide our customers with our newly developed XS, TX, and NS series in 2017. GCP, which was first to find cement chemicals and is a leader by far in the world cement additive chemicals market, must set the quality and innovation standards in all conditions and always be in competition with itself. GCP Turkey cement team is ready to work towards new goals with our cement producer partners in 2017 as well!
