Interview with Altuğ Tuğsuz, General Manager of Altuğ Kimya

We conducted a pleasant interview with Altuğ Tuğsuz, General Manager of Altuğ Kimya. Mr. Altuğ Tuğsuz shared very valuable information with us regarding Altuğ Kimya's operations and areas of focus.  

Could you tell our readers about yourself and your professional background?

I was born in 1976. I am married and have 2 sons. After completing my university education and military service, I began my business career in our family company. Since then, I have served as General Manager. Altuğ Kimya is my first and only professional experience. I am the eldest of three sons of a lawyer father and a homemaker mother. The three brothers work together. I am at the Istanbul facility, my middle brother Ali Tuğsuz heads our Gaziantep facility and is responsible for finance. My youngest brother Göksu Tuğsuz leads the export unit and serves as Vice Chairman of Aysad Association and as Chairman of the Fair Committee. I have 4 nephews; we are a large and closely-knit family. Our success actually stems from our family unity. I would not advise anyone to become an executive in their own firm without working at other companies first. Unfortunately, we learned everything through our own effort, but you can only possess what you have paid the price for. As Altuğ Kimya, we reached where we are and achieved our success through hard work.

What are your product groups and which sectors do you serve?

Our main areas of activity are footwear, automotive and furniture. We produce chemicals for these 3 sectors. Currently, we have a team of 72 people. We have a highly valued, well-equipped and trained workforce. Our main production areas are pigment dispersions, wax dispersions, emulsions and esterification reactions. If we calculate based on the tonnage of polyurethane system raw materials consumed in Turkey, we appear to hold a significant market share that is large enough to affect and influence the sector in the domestic market. We have seen that the greatest investment for a company is having a good workforce structure. Personnel quality determines the quality of the company. In 2021, we completed our missing positions in proportion to our company's production and sales capacity. Before asking "Where to?", you need to ask "With whom?". If you don't have a team you can trust behind you, success quickly slips away. To be able to take growth leaps, you need to attach importance to human resources. We are as ready for tomorrow as we have prepared ourselves; otherwise, what you have achieved loses its value. Our priority was staffing, and we gave it that priority. Companies that cannot determine their priorities well shrink over time or disappear. We operate believing that "success should be based on the company, not the sector". The sector may be in crisis or those years may be very good; when times are bad, if you have a good team beside you, new areas can be created in a short time.

Could you tell us about the polyurethane product groups you provide to the footwear sector?

Our main product groups in production are polyol color pastes, water and solvent-based mold release agents, solvent-based decorative effect surface paints, and water and solvent-based in-mold paints. Our mold release agents provide properties such as matte, glossy and semi-matte in footwear, automotive and furniture sectors, allowing the product to separate easily from the mold without damage. We have paintable mold release agents available. Additionally, our water-based mold release agents show much better performance with our newly developed formulas. Our sprayable solvent-based surface paints particularly highlight the decorative aspect of the sole in polyurethane sole manufacturing. Water-based in-mold paints are a production method applied in slipper manufacturing where spray paint is applied directly into the mold without washing or special processing of the slipper sole.

What is your company's approach to R&D? Could you tell us about your R&D activities?

We have a large team of graduates from chemistry departments of universities equipped and experienced in working to improve the performance of the products we manufacture and make them more effective, focusing only on doing better without considering costs. We have support from professors and consultant firms from both domestic and foreign sources for our R&D. We produce and approve many new products, but it is not possible to launch them on the market under Turkey's current economic conditions. Since cheaper products are always requested, the products we develop end up being expensive; therefore, instead of competing, we decided to sell our products to Europe. High-performance, expensive but lower-cost-in-use products—instead of explaining this, we decided to launch and sell these products in Europe. Our story of company establishment in Europe began here. We have two separate new product groups, solvent-based and solvent-free, for the packaging and automotive sectors. All R&D work is completed, products are approved, machinery for production and laboratory equipment for quality control have been purchased, and raw material orders have been placed. We will begin production of these 2 main groups within 2 months. We are very excited about this.

As Altuğ Kimya, which points do you emphasize to maintain quality in your products and ensure customer satisfaction?

All products arriving at our warehouse undergo input quality control; if the same product peaks are verified, they are admitted to the warehouse, otherwise they are returned. The same is done before packaging, all produced products are compared with standard product values and packaged if suitable. Despite all this, errors still occur. During the pandemic period, there were serious raw material disruptions that devastated us, but that has now been resolved. We are not experiencing a raw material crisis, so we have returned to our old system; we consistently work with the same companies and purchase the same products. When selecting suppliers, we prioritize purchasing raw materials from companies of a certain size. Large companies have completed their quality control process development; in a sense, they perform quality control in our place. Our technical team and quality certifications are things that have existed for many years.

What does sustainability mean for your company?

Companies that cannot achieve sustainability are doomed to disappear; we know this very well. The ways to achieve this are mechanization, working with white-collar trained personnel and operational systems, production personnel investment and factory investment. We started doing these things 12 years ago. We are a team of 72 people. Some companies think they can compete with us with 5-6 people. We are trying to run a marathon; even if we fall, we want to be able to get back up and have time to close the distance we lose in between, which is why we work on sustainability. Of course, our goal is to be the most successful, most productive company in terms of product development, but first and foremost, sustainability is the most priority issue for our company. As the Altuğ Kimya family: we commit to maintaining sustainable quality production in our region, encouraging continuous improvement, and sustaining a focus on increasing customer satisfaction by evaluating risks and opportunities that could affect the conformity of products and services. I wish for Altuğ Kimya to be a company that continues its existence in this way.

Could you tell us about your company's future goals?

We established Altuğ Chemie GMBH, headquartered in Düsseldorf, Germany this year. We want to be present in Europe as well. We see that the quality of our products and our company's economic, personnel, production, supply and mechanization capacity now have impact and say globally. As a first step, we established a company in Germany, hired personnel and opened a warehouse. We have very large goals in Europe. We hope to bring our sales figures and company recognition to the highest level. An even longer-term goal is to establish a factory in Latin America, but this is of course a long-term project. We also have ideas we are pursuing with enthusiasm. We have started producing chemicals that we previously imported from abroad and used, and we have started exporting them back abroad. Three to four years ago, these were dreams or just ideas; now we can make them reality.