We had a very pleasant interview with Altuğ Tuğsuz, General Manager of Altuğ
Kimya. Mr. Altuğ Tuğsuz; shared with us invaluable information about Altuğ Kimya’s activities and focus points.
Could you please tell our readers about yourself and your professional background?
I was born in 1976. I am married and I have 2 sons. After my university and military service period, I started my commercial life in our own family company, and since then I have been working as the General Manager of the company.
My first and only professional background is Altuğ Kimya. I am the eldest of three sons of a lawyer father and a housewife mother. As 3 brothers we work together. I am in the Istanbul factory, my middle brother Ali Tuğsuz is the head of our Gaziantep Facility and is responsible for finance.
My younger brother, Göksu Tuğsuz, is the head of the export unit and also the vice chairman of the Aysad and the chairman of the fair committee. I have 4 nephews and we are a large and connected family.
In fact, the source of our success comes from our family integrity. I do not recommend being a manager in their own company without working in other companies. Unfortunately, we learned everything by our own efforts, but you get what you pay for. As Altuğ Kimya, we have achieved the success we have achieved by working hard.
What are your product groups and which sectors do you serve?
Our main field of activity;. We produce chemicals for these 3 sectors. We are currently a staff of 72 people in total. We have a very valuable, well-equipped and trained staff. Our main production subject is; pigment dispersions, wax dispersions, emulsion and esterification reactions.
If we calculate according to the tonnage of the polyurethane system raw materials consumed in Turkey, we seem to have a large enough market share to influence and direct the sector in the domestic market. We have seen that the biggest investment for a company is to have a good staff structure.
The quality of employees determines the quality of the firm. In 2021, we have completed our missing staff in proportion to the production and sales power of our company. “Where?” before the question “With whom?” had to ask the question. The success escapes quick, if
you dont have any team behind you can trust..
In order to make a leap to grow, it is necessary to give importance to human resources. We are as ready for tomorrow as we can be, otherwise what you have achieved has no value.
Our priority was staffing, we gave it priority. Firms that cannot determine their priorities well are getting smaller or disappearing over time. We act with the motto that “success should not be according to the sector, but according to the company”.
The sector maybe in crisis or those years may be very good, if there is a good team with you when it is bad, new areas can be created in a short time.
Could you please tell us about your polyurethane product groups that you offer to the shoe industry?
Our main product groups are; polyol color pastes, water and solvent based mold release agents, solvent based decorative effect surface paints, water and solvent based in-mold paints. Our mold release agents offer matte, glossy and semi-matt properties in the footwear, automotive and furniture industries, allowing the product to be easily released from the mold without being damaged.
We have paintable release agents available. In addition, our water-based release agents perform much better with our newly developed formulas. Our sprayable solvent-based surface paints make the sole stand out decoratively, especially in polyurethane sole
manufacturing.
Water-based in-mold paints; It is a type of production that is applied by spraying paint into the mold without washing the slipper sole and without special treatment in the production of slippers.
What is your company’s perspective on R&D? Could you please talk about your R&D studies?
We have a well-equipped and experienced team, graduated from chemistry departments of universities, who are trying to do better without thinking about the working costs in order to improve the performance of the products we produce and to ensure that they are used
more effectively.
There are professors and consultant companies from home and abroad that give us R&D support. We produce many new products and habe them approved, but it is not possible for us to put them on the market in the current economic conditions of Turkey.
Since more cost-effective products are always desired, the products we develop remain expensive, we decided to sell products to Europe instead of competing.
Performance, expensive but less costly to use, but instead of explaining this, we decided to launch these products in Europe and sell them. Our company establishment story in Europe also started here. We have two new product groups, with and without solvent, for the packaging and automotive industry.
All R&D studies have been completed, products have been approved, machines for production, laboratory equipment for quality controls, raw material orders have been given. We are starting the production of these 2 main groups within 2 months. We are very excited about this.
As Altuğ Kimya, which points do you give importance to maintain the quality of your products and ensure the satisfaction of your customers?
Input quality controls of all products coming to our warehouse are made, if the same product peaks are provided, they are entered into the warehouse; otherwise they are returned.
The same is done before packaging; all manufactured products are compared with standard product values and packed if appropriate. Despite all this, errors still occur. There were serious raw material problems during the pandemic period, this made us miserable, but now it’s fixed.
We are not experiencing a raw material crisis, so we have returned to our old system;
we are constantly working with the same companies and we buy the same products. When choosing a company, we attach importance to buying raw materials from companies of a certain size.
Large companies have completed their quality control process developments, in a way they
do quality control instead of us. Our technical team and quality certificates are things that have existed for many years already.
What does sustainability mean for your company?
Companies that cannot ensure sustainability are doomed to extinction, we know this very well. The ways to achieve this are; mechanization, working with white-collar equipped employees and operating systems, production employee investment, factory investment.
It has been 12 years since we started doing these. We are a staff of 72 people. There are companies that think they are competing with us with 5-6 people. We are trying to run a marathon, even if we fall, we want to have time to get up again and close the distance we lost; that’s why we work for sustainability.
Of course, we aim to be the most successful company that can develop the most products, but first and foremost, sustainability is the top priority for our company.
As the Altuğ Kimya family, we are committed to maintaining the focus on increasing customer satisfaction by making sustainable quality production in its region, encouraging continuous improvement, evaluating the risks and opportunities that may affect the suitability of products and services.
Could you please talk about the future targets of your company?
We established Altug Chemie GMBH company in Dusseldorf this year. We want to be in Europe too. We see that the quality of our products, the economic, employee, production, supply and mechanization capacity of our company are now effective and have a say in the global.
As the first step, we established a company in Germany and opened a warehouse by hiring employee. We have very big goals in Europe. We hope that we will carry our sales figures and company awareness to the highest level.
The longer-term goal is to establish a factory in Latin America, but this is of course a long-term project. There are also ideas that we are passionately pursuing.
We started to produce chemicals that we import and use from abroad, and we started to export them back abroad. These were dreams or just an idea 3-4 years ago, now we can realize them.
