Interview with Tulga Dal, General Manager of İba Kimya

İba Kimya, which exports to over 40 countries across 4 continents, continues to grow rapidly with a strategy of maintaining a presence in virtually every sector. İba Kimya General Director Tulga Dal provided information during our interview about the company's development process and current structure.

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

After TED Ankara Koleji, I graduated from Middle East Technical University with a degree in Chemical Engineering. I began my career at Volkan Boya, which produced furniture varnishes and industrial paints. My first experience in 1995 introduced me to paint production processes and the factory environment. After gaining three years of experience in wet paint formulation and production, I joined our family company İba Kimya.

Could you provide information about İba Kimya's founding process and the stages it has gone through until today? What is the current structure of İba Kimya?

İba Kimya entered the sector in 1977 as a company producing insulation chemicals. The company, founded by my father İbrahim Dal, was producing wood paints and varnishes when it decided in 1995 to begin electrostatic powder coating production. In the global paint sector, powder coatings increasingly replaced wet paints, and İba Kimya kept pace with this trend, achieved success and quickly became a technology-producing company. Today, as our flagship company, İba Kimya also leads our group companies, which employ over 800 people.

What sectors and product types does İba Kimya primarily serve? Could you provide information about İba Kimya's products, brands and services, particularly in the paints and coatings and surface technology areas?

Looking at sectoral distribution, we see white goods and architectural applications standing out. However, I must emphasize that our goal is not to concentrate on specific sectors, but rather to develop products that can serve all sectors. Nevertheless, our products, which we call Smart Paints and saw significant demand especially during the pandemic period, have put us a step ahead in the market. To give an example, our IBACLEAN hygiene paint, developed for application on hygienic surfaces and which has completed international approval processes, is seeing significant demand. Beyond this, we have extremely positive feedback from our customers regarding our IBAFAST Smart Paint, which can be applied at low temperatures in the face of rising energy costs and provides economy at facilities.

Could you tell us about your domestic and export sales activities? What types of products do you primarily sell to which regions domestically and abroad?

Today, İba Kimya has become a company with two production facilities in Turkey and one in Slovakia, with employee count reaching 400. In addition to being the market leader in our country, İba Kimya, which exports to over 40 countries across 4 continents, has shown very rapid growth performance with a strategy of maintaining presence in virtually every sector. While our headquarters is in Ankara, we reach our customers through Regional Directorates in Istanbul (two offices), Izmir, Kayseri and Konya. In today's world where after-sales service is as important as sales, our customers work directly with our Sales and Service Engineers. In addition, our dealers who have worked with us for many years in Bursa, Samsun, Adana and Gaziantep also serve our customers. We are trying to grow in the foreign market with a similar strategy. In countries we see as emerging markets—Russia, Poland, Germany and Slovakia—we continue our stock and sales activities with our own companies and employees. We believe that the most important way to gain acceptance in distant geographies is to be local in those markets, and we structure our investments and business partnerships in line with this strategy.

What kind of work do you conduct in the areas of innovation and R&D as İba Kimya? Do you have projects developed within the scope of university-industry cooperation, and if so, what are they?

We place great importance and priority on our product development work, which we conduct as an R&D Center. With the team we strengthened in recent years and our laboratory infrastructure, we try to respond more quickly to our current customers' demands while also working on new products that exceed market expectations. We particularly prioritize projects conducted in cooperation with our customers. In the powder coating sector, success in laboratory work and gaining customer confidence in the developed product is only possible through effective field experience. This further increases the importance of conducting technological cooperation with users.

Could you provide information about İba Kimya's environmental policy and sustainability approach? What can you say about your work related to occupational health and safety?

As İba Kimya, we aimed to leave a sustainable world for future generations where air, water and soil pollution are prevented, environmental protection awareness is ensured, and humane living is possible. To ensure economic, environmental and social sustainability, we have adopted principles including compliance with legal requirements, implementation of occupational health and safety measures to protect our employees from occupational accidents and diseases, reduction of activity-based waste and recovery, prevention of soil, water and air pollution, reduction of carbon emissions, generation of our own electricity from solar energy, continuous improvement in energy efficiency, quality, methods and technology, ensuring economic growth, information security, compliance with business ethics principles, satisfaction and improvement of our employees, customers and suppliers, support for education, sports and athletes, and participation in social benefit projects on a voluntary basis. Regarding occupational health and safety, we implement the ISO 45001 management system. With a proactive approach, we aim to prevent occupational accidents and diseases before they occur. We identify hazards and risks arising from our activities together with our employees and implement actions to eliminate the risks. We monitor the working environment and ensure that occupational safety measures are taken before work begins. All our employees are provided with personal protective equipment suitable for their working environment. We organize periodic training to raise awareness regarding the risks they are exposed to and the measures that must be taken.

What criteria are prioritized when İba Kimya formulates investment plans? Do you have investment plans for the coming periods, and if so, what are they?

We see 2022 as an important year in which we will implement our new investments planned for capacity increase. We will continue to be proactive in order to give our company an even more agile identity in line with changing market expectations and to make the momentum we have achieved permanent. In our investments, we target not only capacity increase but also development of our technological infrastructure. However, on the other hand, we view the most important investment as investment in human resources and continue our activities in this direction.