Onur Battal
Tüv Austria SILA Quality Control Sales and Marketing Manager
Could you briefly tell us about the foundation story of your company and your activities?
Our co-founder, Halit Battal, is a senior sergeant and subordinate officer retired from the Turkish Air Force. For many years, he has worked in the field of aircraft maintenance, in the fuselages, engines, landing gear of F16 aircrafts and non-destructive inspection. In the absence of a private sector in this area in Turkey, he has started this work in the Air Force. He attended many trainings in America. He took part in the establishment of non-destructive testing laboratory in air bases when F16 aircrafts first came to Turkey. After retirement, he worked at several companies in the
private sector. He served as Technical Manager and Turkmenistan Country Manager, especially in one of Bursa’s leading companies. In 2007, we established our own company. During our work in Turkmenistan, we had the need and idea to found a company. We established our Bursa office in 2009. We have the headquarters in Bursa and we have offices in Izmir and Ankara. We also have communication offices in İzmit and Adana. We have a branch in Turkmenistan. We have branches, offices and projects in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Russia. Within the framework of expansion and growth policy, an office will be opened in Uzbekistan soon.
As a quality control company, you provide comprehensive services. How many employees
do you have?
We are mainly looking at industrial quality control and certification. We check the suitability of a product. These products are mostly metallic and welded joints. If we give an example from the cement industry; there are various welded joints in cement equipment mills, furnaces, grinders, silos, cyclones, steel construction structures in the factory. Sometimes you can also process and use casting parts with machining. We are responsible for the quality of both the metal parts themselves and their welded joints. This may be a customer request. It may also be required by a state specification. Which controls will be carried out according to which standards, who are the companies capable of doing these controls? It is a requirement for the inspection bodies to take 17020 accreditation certificate from Accreditation Agency of Turkey. We are the first and only company that incorporates three different accreditations in the sector. There are also non-destructive inspection parts, control of the products during the production phase, usage and post-use controls, assembly controls, production controls. On the one hand, we have 17024 accreditation. This certification accreditation is also on the staff certification side. Two different personnel certifications are carried out here. The first is the certification of welders; certification of both metal and plastic welders who will work in the sector and certification of nondestructive inspection staff. Because the person who will perform the non-destructive examination must also have valid qualification. The internationally recognized certification works were also first carried out by our company as first private sector in Turkey. We also have 17025 accreditation. This is laboratory accreditation. We have a total of 3 mechanical test laboratories, 1 in our Bursa center and 2 in Russia. In these mechanical test laboratories, destructive tests of cast, forged parts and welded metal parts are performed.
Shouldn’t these checks be done in an independent laboratory?
17025 accreditation means that you are an independent and impartial laboratory. Laboratories can also be within companies. For example, you are a pipe manufacturer. Pipe manufacturers have to perform various tests in the production they make from the roll of sheet metal they open. They do this on their own, but their customers can also seek support from independent organizations like us. Accreditation already provides this. It brings independence. We are the first and only institution in the sector with 17020, 17024, 17025 accreditations. There are such accreditations in semi-private, semi-governmental organizations or universities, but when it comes to the private sector, we exist. Our current accreditations are according to TÜRKAK, European accreditations are applied in the European Union and we also work according to American standards. Our accreditation is also valid there. Our company also has the necessary GOST accreditations as we work in the Russian Federation and Commonwealth of Independent States. There is no other company in Turkey having GOST accreditation.
Which sectors do you offer services besides cement?
Our main concern is metal. So you can call us the “metal doctor”. For example, assume that you went to a hospital, your arm is hurt. The doctor does not immediately cut and look inside, whether there is a fracture or not. He says let’s take an x-ray, he may request or diagnose other examinations based on the x-ray film. We also take an x-ray of the metal, an x-ray of the welding. Parts come to us from time to time, but in general we do business on site. Various test plans, namely quality control plans, are applied in all stages until the raw material is taken according to the customer’s request and turned into a semi-finished product in the workshop, shipped to the site and goes into the assembly stage, and then reaches the final control. In this planning, our work covers a large part. Although these applications are predominant in the industrial sector, we are also receiving works from different sectors.
Which companies do you offer services to?
We work with many large international and Turkish companies. There are many big companies doing business worldwide such as Rönesans, Çalık Holding, Tekfen, Gama and Enka. International companies such as Hyundai, Kawasaki, Mitsubishi, Petronas, Petrofac, Gazprom, Lukoil are among our portfolio. We obtained these references with our own studies. We had a merger in July 2019.
When Austria made the decision to make such an investment, we can say that it wanted this merger because it saw the customers we reached and contacted. By investing, they are improving their scope of service. They are making purchases in the Far East, Africa, and Central Asia. The purchase demand from Austria was 51 percent. With Tüv Austria, the name Sıla Quality went on a journey towards infinity.
There is a team that has achieved success here. They recognized this. They are telling us that “you know the job so continue with it” because they are partners with this company and the team that has achieved this success. At certain points, there are common decisions such as board decisions, etc. but we are at the head of our own business, as before. We are going on.
What are the difficulties you have while doing your job as a quality control company? What issues challenge you, both for the companies and across the country?
Certification is an industry where many new companies are opened. Naturally, various documents are distributed under the name of various accreditations. There are also firms that can deal with an accreditation company from the Far East and distribute documents, but the industry knows by whom the document hanging on the wall was issued, how it was given, and whether that document was deserved. On the other hand, getting TÜRKAK accreditation is a really important issue. Because we carry out the accreditation work properly in our country. Deserving companies can get this accreditation. We have interim audits every year. This year, we had an audit from TÜRKAK for two weeks. It is checked whether we are working in accordance with accreditation in some way or not. Apart from the execution of the systems we have established, do we do these things well, they also see these. The industry should not doubt about the reliability of documents issued by institutions accredited by TÜRKAK. However, companies should make inquiries for organizations that issue the document from the Far East and Central Asia. Of course, we have various difficulties in our work on certification of non-destructive inspection personnel. First of all, it is difficult to describe our work. People sometimes don’t understand. For example, those who have completed the physics department can easily find a job in our sector, but most of them do not even know that the existence of such a sector or such a business activity. New generation young people live a little too simple. We have difficulty in finding trained personnel. On the other hand, although some companies understand the importance of quality and work accordingly, quality is still seen in our country as a requirement rather than a necessity. They say we have to do it because the specification wants it. Therefore, they are trying to minimize the budget they will allocate to this area. If they perceive it as a necessity, their perspectives will change as the product to be produced will affect the quality of the work to be performed. Of course, we have companies that are aware of this and appreciate its value. However, we are in a situation where there is no more quality control logic. We are better than before. And, of course the economic conditions can push firms to make saving on the service areas we offer. There are also companies that provide the service we provide at a lower price, without accreditation.
How was 2019 overall for you? Can we get a general evaluation?
Our targets were not fulfilled in 2019. It was not possible to fulfill anyway. Manufacturing industry capacity utilization was very low. It has been a difficult year for us as the producer industry index has been browsing in minuses, but we have not dismissed our team. On the contrary, we started with a 20% growth with 2020. On the one hand it is not enough also to work in Turkey. You must also have projects abroad. Here, what kept us alive was the overseas projects in our hard times.
What is your expectation from 2020?
We started 2020 fast and growing. Although there is not a huge stir within Turkey, the works received by our customers which we are providing services will enable us a little more growth. We have added a few important customers to our customer portfolio.
We started to work in Europe for the first time, we got a job in Hungary. We are trying to get a big job in Poland. We can say that 2020-2021 will be good for us. Because the revenues that we earned in Turkey is usually on the breakeven point. Every business we take abroad will return to us as an extra profit. The problems of the employers are already more or less known, but stormy weathers may affect the companies that do their job properly. The doors or windows can break, but the building eventually remains in place. We think we are doing our job properly. I hope it will be better. I think we can say that 2019 was the worst point we saw. After that, we expect some upward acceleration. We don’t have such great expectations, but at least it looks like we will go up from the bottom.
How many people are there in your team?
At one point, we were 650 people even in Turkmenistan. But at that time, we were running 11 projects there. We were doing the quality control works of the platforms where Petronas extracted natural gas and oil in the Caspian Sea. At that time, we had 1000 people in Russia, Turkey, Turkmenistan but at the moment for instance we have 120-125 people in Turkey. Our Turkey team is generally stable. It doesn’t make too much plus-minus. We have now decreased the numbers to 100-120 from 250-300 in Russia, but in 2020, 2 new projects will start again. It looks like we will continue with 200s figures. We will have a small staff of 5-6 people in Hungary, but we plan to get another job so it seems that we will be 15-20 people with this addition. Our work has been completed in Turkmenistan. At the moment, it has been experiencing a crisis for several years. We have 5 core staff left now, but that will increase. Our business abroad is usually project-based but there are many factories we constantly provide services in Turkey. There are also projects. For example, we are currently working on the Çanakkale Bridge. Star Refinery was made in Aliağa. It is now planned to build a refinery called Mercury in 2022. At Star Refinery, our team was crowded. After that project, we directed our team to different fields. If a project starts there, the number will increase a little more.
How do you reach companies? Or how do companies find you? How does the sales process of a certification company work?
You have to introduce yourself when you first enter the sector. After reaching a certain level of success, this need is slightly reduced, but it never ends. A marketing activity has to happen all the time. We reach the companies we research and find on the internet, and we can create potential with the references of the people in the companies we do business with, or people who have worked with us or worked in the field we serve and then transferred. Our scope is expanding every day. That’s why we have to make a continuous promotion. We have to show ourselves over and over again. We always visit our existing customers, we visit our passive customers, we visit our potential customers.
Do you have any major competitors doing the same job in Turkey?
I think we are the first or the second company in Turkey in terms of equipment and personnel size. There may be companies larger than us based on turnover. There are some companies, particularly those working for many years in Turkey. I guess their turnover is higher than us. These companies are also 100 percent local. While competing with these companies, we seem to share areas such as Africa, the Middle East and the Arabian Peninsula. Everyone is loading more into a specific area. We ask the first time customers which company they are working with. If there is another company, we do not intervene. We are not breaking the functioning order. Because if there is no need, there is no point in trying to get in by force if the company is working properly.
Can we get to know you a little bit?
I was born in Ankara in 1980. My mother was a primary school teacher, and my father was a subordinate officer. After my father retired, we settled in Bursa. I studied at Uludağ University. I worked at various non-governmental organizations at the university time. I headed the Bursa branch of AIESEC. I have worked in quality related jobs since my university life. I entered the construction industry sometime, but we have been working in our own company since 2007. We have been here since our establishment. Then my brother joined us. We were a family business until the merger. I met my wife thanks to our work abroad. She is Russian, so we improved our language. I lived in Russia and Turkmenistan for about 8 years due to our job. I’m in Turkey last 2 years. I operate in sales and marketing in the company. Of course, I also took duties such as Turkmenistan Country Director and Russia Country Director, but I do not have a single task.