Board Chair, Seza Cement
Prof. Dr. Yasemin Açık
Seza Cement, where you started working as a female entrepreneur, accomplishes significant works as a environment friendly and energy efficient factory. How are your investments in this area? How is the overall progress of the company?
Seza Sement is the largest private sector investment in the Eastern Anatolian Region all along the period of Turkish Republic. While contributing to the national economy and employment by this factory, we also cared about preservation of this unique geography. Undoubtedly, building an environment friendly cement factory requires a rather large investment. However, such investments bring a serious productivity in long run as well as environmental and hence, social benefit. Accordingly, keeping this in mind, we made an investment for preserving environment and nature in order to raise the existing environmental conscious even more in the sector despite the additional costs it put on us.
In our factory, we use bag filter system in all units including intermediate units. Because of this system, dust particulate emissions from out plant to the environment are extremely low. There are legal limits for dust particulate emissions levels from cement factories. Such limit for our country is 50 milligram per ton while European Union standard is 30 milligram. In our plant, this is not even over 1 milligram; actually around 0.70 milligram. The bag filter system entraps any dust created like a vacuum cleaner, and allows us to use it again as raw material. All our processes in the factory are European origin, providing us with a factory with higher energy efficiency and low calorie values.
We have significant initiatives for waste management as well. Our factory was built as plant with pre-calcination utility. We make use of stack gas in clinker cooling and heating the factory. Thus, we make use of waste heat in central heating system during winter times as well as in various stages of production in addition to protecting the environment.
In order for fulfilling our environmental obligations, we set up a “Environment Management Unit”. This unit is also responsible for providing training to all employees for raising environmental conscious and supervision of applications in field. All our training programs and inter-unit practices enable avoidance of creating pollution; in any event, where pollution is inevitable, we collect wastes separately at origin and ensure that any recyclable or reusable waste is delivered to relevant certified organizations. Any waste collection points, whether inter-unit or the last point of collection before dispatch, are observed and reported weekly by our environmental engineer.
What would you say about your approaches on sustainability and energy recovery efforts and your social responsibility activities?
Sustainable energy, in particular, investing in solar energy, was an issue in our agenda for a long time. We consider it not only an investment, but also our social responsibility project. For that purpose, we continue our works for building a solar energy plant very close to Seza Cement. We will start the installation of the plant in the first quarter and complete it within the year. We will build this plant primarily for the consumption of our cement factory. In the first stage, we will have an installed capacity that will cover 30 percent of the entire electricity consumption of the factory. In time, we will increase our investments more in this field. Thus, we aim to contribute to the reduction of the import cost of the national energy need.
It was a difficult year for both the world and Turkey. What are your forecasts and expectations for 2021?
The world and our country lived through a tough year; both health-wise as well as social and economic, and it still goes on like that. I think that at least the first half of 2021 will be difficult. In terms of economy, there was a slight expansion in the cement sector despite of shrinkage in many sectors due to pandemics. We quickly overcome the first shock caused by pandemics, and continued to grow. I forecast that the growth trend in our sector will continue in 2021 as well.
“As Seza Çimento, we focused on exports due to slowdown in domestic market on the first stages of the pandemics. Particularly from African market, Libya, Syria and Israel, we received serious demands. In May and June, the domestic market picked up again, and such demand continued by the year-end. As result, we accomplished about 1.9 million tons of production in 2020; we sold 600 thousand tons thereof to overseas and the rest domestically. We will also continue to grow this year both domestically and in overseas.
As an health care professional, what do you think about the recent developments? Do you think the pandemic is being managed adequately? What do you think in consideration of the cement sector in particular?
Firstly, the pandemics is a global health crisis. Undoubtedly, we cannot deny the adverse outlook created in economy; however, our priority must be health. The cement sector displayed a successful performance from that perspective, by determining the priority as the health and safety of its employees. We also took preventive and protective emergency measures for protecting our employees from the very beginning of the pandemics. As result of such measures, we continued our production non-stop at our factory while protecting our employees’ health. On the other hand, we quickly adapted to the new world order. We adapted rather quickly to utilize video meetings and remote working that we were not used to. We continued our communications influentially with our domestic network and oversea markets. As an health care professional, I observe that the awareness in epidemics, natural disasters, and crises is increased as result of corona virus. From now on, we must be much more cautious and keep up with whatever the new times bring. Any company, prioritizing health and safety of employees, reconstructing business models, ready for
any kind of crisis, and catching up with the digital transformation, will continue to survive and grow in this period; those not meeting up with the foregoing will face to the risk of shutting down.
What are the advantages or disadvantages of being a woman in a male-dominated sector?
The cement sector is a male-dominated sector due to its physical workload. However, I believe that business is genderless in all the fields where physical power is not effective. In the establishment stages of Seza Çimento, I spent almost every day on site following the feasibility and licensing periods. The workers seeing me on site were very surprised at first, but later on, they got used to, and understood that gender makes no difference whether on site or in trade. In my opinion, all sectors are dominated by success, not by men or women.
What are the constraints and strengths you observe in the cement sector? Which steps should be taken for becoming a trademark and accomplishing successful works in the world?
The cement sector continues to accomplish significant successful works by sustaining its growth despite the pandemics. As of today, our country is the second largest cement exporter in the world. In Europe, we are the number one in terms of both capacity and sales. While having such a successful performance, price increase in electricity, which is one of two great expense items in cement production, caused increase in expenditures of the sector along with the increase in coal prices resulted from the raises in currency exchange rates. Consequently, although there is no problem in sales, profitability dropped due to both increases in expense items and the cement prices being very much lower than where they should be.
The course of higher profitability in our sector, particularly of greater successes in exports, is through Research & Development; because there is a new era in front of us after the pandemics. For instance, business models are changed; transforming to hybrid working or completely remote working is already started. Consequently, construction sector will receive different demands; green buildings, smart homes and offices will be in demand, and accordingly, the cement sector will be affected. If we focus on becoming a trademark, as well as developing innovative products and services for fulfilling the market demands in the best way, our sector will continue to grow globally.
You are in the list of “The Most Powerful 50 Business Women of Turkey”. How did you manage to reach this level of success in a challenging sector of cement? What is the secret behind this?
Along with my academic studies all my life, I actively participated in non-governmental organizational activities and our family business; in other words, I was always on the go. However, despite all those, I always wanted to accomplish a project of my own only, from scratch to the end. On the other hand, I dreamed of this work to mitigate the regional developmental differences and contribute to local development, by not only increasing employment, but also touching to numerous people, meaning the community, with all their families, suppliers, and subordinate elements of those employed. All these were possible only by industry. In 2011, when the conditions became ripe for making a substantial investment in industry, I decided to enter to the cement sector. In the pre-investment preparation stage, I had already completed all infrastructural works, such as feasibility studies, market study, and the period of payback. When the procedures of chosen proper location and creating financial resource were completed, I made the investment between the years 2014 and 2016. Since it was not possible to spare time for academia during this busy process, I requested a three-year leave without pay. Frankly, it was not a very easy period; I was in a great hectic, spending great effort for every brick in every stage.
The trick is that frankly, I also had the chance of building this factory inside a harbor area in another province. However, I chose Elazığ to increase employment in the region, contribute to the development thereof, and thus, pay the duty of loyalty to the land I was born and raised in. Since I am always with the people, I observed very clearly how much Elazığ needed any industrial investment, job opportunities, and production. I believe I became successful by acting with such duty of loyalty, prioritizing rights, law, and justice, abiding to rightful fair sharing, adding some social responsibility to everything I do, sincerely laboring over, and staying on my target for strong goals.
As the company, what do you do to support ‘women entrepreneurs’ and ‘women employment’? How many female workers do you have?
The cement sector is a sector of heavy physical workload, and therefore, male-dominant. Therefore, female employees in the sector are mostly in management and service departments. At this point, I may say that our ratio of female employees is above the sector averages.
The issue of women is especially important for me; because I know very well the hardship encountered by women, particularly the ones in the Eastern Region. I believe that any and every drawback preventing women to participate to social, economic, and communal life could be overcome by working together implementing correct policies to be set forth by collaboration and common sense. Therefore, in every work and project I realize, I care very much to include the issue of strengthening women in multiple aspects. In this context, we develop various projects for women in the works of Elazığ Association of Business Women, Elazığ Economy Platform, and Fırat Industrialists and Business World Federation where I hold the office of presidency, and pay attention to contributing in inclusion of women in our region much more in every extent of life.