We made a pleasant interview with Chairman of the Board Mr. Ünal Soysal from Petroyağ Company, about activity areas and R&D efforts of the company. Soysal also gave information on actions taken by the company to adapt at the process of pandemic.
Could you inform your readers about yourselves and your professional background?
I was born in Ankara in 1957. I graduated from Chemical Engineering of Gazi University. After working in Mineral Oils Department of Petrol Ofisi for 8 years as of April 1980, I started to work in American Texaco with the offer of Turkey Sales Manager of Texaco. When Texaco decided to withdraw from Turkey, I decided to establish my own company. This is how Petroyağ started its journey in 1993.
What are your product ranges and which sectors do you provide services for?
My first purpose since I established Petroyağ was to serve Turkish Industry and we focused on industrial oils that the Industry needs in line with this purpose. First of all, we have become a leading and reliable company in Turkey in the field of oils by importing White oils and expanding their fields of use.
Oil sector is a quite wide field, we increased our oil types and service sectors day by day. White oils, Aluminum mill oils, process oils, heat transfer oils, compressor oils are some of our product ranges through which we dominate over the sector. In addition, we maintain creating added value by examining various projects from our customers in our R&D Center. We also provide counseling service for all lubricators and chemicals that are used in industrial productions.
What is your point of view for R&D? Could you give information about your R&D activities you carry out in your company?
R&D means so much to us. The reason why Petroyağ is the 3rd Biggest Industrial Oil Supplier in Turkey and the only company with Turkish capital at 100% among these 3 companies is that we perform R&D continuously and release innovative products into the market with new application areas.
We became the first R&D Center of our sector approved by the Ministry of Industry in 2017. We employ 23 personnel in our R&D Center. 1 person has Doctor’s degree and 7 persons have postgraduate degree. We have ongoing works performed with TUBITAK and the European Union Projects.
With mutual projects that we want to realize in R&D, we would like to use Industry-University-Private Sector triangle in the abroad as it is and make it more efficient. As we increase the number of our activities in the recent years, I notice that there are various special projects in our Universities, but these have remained as project, could not go beyond. If these are supported with industry and private sector and converted into commercial products, they will create a huge added value to our country.
Suddenly, the whole world has been affected by Pandemic and what did you do in this unexpected situation? How did you get over the pandemic period?
We took action without a moment to spare. We realized necessary actions one by one together. We took necessary steps to assure ourselves. We considered them under 4 main titles; Our Health, Our Safety, Our Togetherness and Assurance, Our Future…
First of all, we assure all our customers and suppliers that we will not delay their supplies by informing them about our measures and implementations. We made plans to conduct our finance in the best way and gave importance in our cash flow.
We are a great family and our health is the most important thing. We guaranteed that all our employees would not lose their jobs and added new colleagues to our team even in this period. The first 2 months was so hard for us, but then we closed the year by catching up with our losses thanks to increase in our sales. Despite of many changes such as those measures, working in shifts in production department and working from home for half of our employees, we could manage them very well as the whole Petroyağ. Even if we went through harsh times, we managed to get over it and we are much happier now…
What does sustainability mean for your company? What measures you take while producing for a sustainable world?
The most important step of sustainability is innovation. We have entered into a new settlement that produces adequate budget bringing R&D activities into the forefront. For this, we decided to continue our new projects.
In recently-established company and production fields. However, Our Service Understanding-Quickness-Safe and Ethical Principles and solution-orientedness with our customers and employees that we always prioritize are some of the components make us a sustainable company.
Understanding the importance of digitalization due to pandemic, we also know that we should focus on start-ups that will enable us to settle accordingly.
