How did you decide to invest?
Fuat TOSYALI: We really had powerfull machinery. All the manufacturers, merchants and craftsmen in the region knew us well. Above all our integrity and assiduousness is our biggest asset, if we started something then everybody knew we would do it right and in the best way possible thus every product we made was received incedibly well.
Today this has not changed a bit. We have a good name in the sector. Essentially there is the best research and developement behind every product we market. Even when I was establishing Tosyalı Demir Çelik, it was the best rolling mill of its day. Naturally customers brought other customers and the work did so too.
However, customers had demands of the market on seamed tube profiles, those days manufacturers had big supply problems. We too had a lot of problems and saw that we could not buy the goods we wanted in quantities we wanted. Let alone the price, seeing that we could not get the goods we wanted and when expanding our market there were hinderences, we decided to enter the seamed tube profile manufacturing.
The sheet steel is a material we already used in tinkering, stove making always in our hands. With each day as we bought more and more in tonages we started importing the material ourselves. When we established Tosçelik, our competitors were employing 35-40 year old technologies in their productions, and we brought high performance lines for high quality products of world famous machinery manufacturers. Thanks to our customers’ belief and trust in us, what we produced was unfalteringly preferred thus lifted us to an accelerated developement mode.
Never had any market concers then...
Fuat TOSYALI: Never. Every production line we had was the first in our region. Till we started these goods were brought in to trade as far from as 1000-1200km away. They received great acclaim when produced in the area. Customers supported this struggle greatly. Eventually Tosçelik in its second or third year was raised to the first 500 Industrial Establishment rapidly. As a matter of fact, recently announced 2009 numbers show Tosçelik to be ahead of all the pipe profile sector and became the 45th biggest industrial firm in the country.
What marketing network do you have? Have you organized dealerships?
Fuat TOSYALI:
We have dealers but above all we have in every city major stock suppliers as our customers. They purchase and stock their own, and serve the industrialists and manufacturers of their own region. We work with these stockers as our customers. All these years our main customer range has not changed much, but as our production grew our dialogue with our customers developed a lot and reached the capacity we have today.
We have started producing for many segments of Constructional steel. At the rolling mill the production scope has increased. During all these years at Tosçelik we produced the first water based anti-rust painted box profile and industrial pipes. For a long time our competitors couldn’t find a place in the niche and this enormously benefited us competitive wise and we were also appreciated by our customers. We have been first in everything we did in this sector. To date producers settled for the market and never invested in the sector, we on the other hand were always innovative.
It can be said that 4-5 years ago the iron and steel sector started growing rapidly. Accelerated in a way. And we decided in those days of growing trend for the investment of today’s Osmaniye plants. Whether or not costly we had to produce our own raw materials we concluded. At first we had not envisaged such a high investment for such a huge production. But the conjucture is at such a point that projects and applications take longer and world trends along with magnitudes change during that time. Naturally we revised twice our project along the way. As time passed the investment grew to a magnitude over 1 billion dollars and in capacity reached 2 million tons. Of course the biggest excitement for us is that it is noted in the history of the Turkish steel industry in gold letters, as the first flat steel investment anew in the Turkish private sector. This is really a daring investment. And it is realized in a record time as well. In 19 months we produced the first hot rolled sheet steel. As being the first produce the pipes rolled were on our customers bench ready for sale. This is quite an achievement, surely.
Here and at your other plants we anticipate new investments eventually. Can you give us some clues about these?
Fuat TOSYALI: We have become the leader in steel pipes sector for Turkey with our Osmaniye establishment. We are one of the few firms that produce its own raw materials. Flat steel and spiral pipe plants are operating. Thus in both seamed and spiral pipes we are one of the limited number of producers that can produce their own raw materials in this range and capacity we have become in every aspect the pioneers of these fields. Therefore we will be continueing with our investment along this line. We will relentlessly develope new products. We will have productions for all kinds of industrial demands from machinery industies to oil drilling industies given the global market devlopements and the end products needed. We are working on these investments and in the mean time, our new investments focusing on end products will commence.
Our steel productions can be culminated under two main titles flat and constructional segments. On the flat side, hot rolled sheet steel and after that there is rolled steel pipes that are produced. The pipes can be divided into two sections as well; there is the production of the longitudinally seamed pipes. Then spiral pipes we can produce in any norm to demand in the world. We even have a capacity for pipes 40 m long, single piece, in 120 inch diameter, with 30 mm wall thickness that has not been produced in Turkey before. On the seamed pipe side at the moment we can produce up to 10 inches in diameters but with the additional new production lines this will rise to 20 even 24 inches. During the two years to come, with these new lines, we will be reaching for new frontiers in the global scene.
On the constructional steel side there are small, medium and large profile series. We can produce all the series below 200 I and U irons. In our newly planned investment we have almost finished the project for the ranges of all the series up to 360. In a very short time when the market has reached a certain point we will be starting the production.
In which steel construction projects do we see the Tosyalı Holding’s products?
Fuat TOSYALI: In Turkey they have been used in various projects like Sabiha Gökçen Airport and many more. Construction companies choose to use our products in natural gas infrastructures, airport projects, industrial buildings, stadiums, and shopping centers. In the near future we are to be one of the main suppliers for the oil pipe lines.
And there is a port investment on the agenda, how is it going?
Fuat TOSYALI: We are venturing for the biggest investment in an Eastern Mediterranean port. Almost the larges one. The preliminary permits are issued. This will not just be a port but a multi functional project with ship maintenance facilities, even a ship building yard. Because there is this Bay of İskenderun stretching in front of us where there is a traffic of tankers fuelling the oil pipe line and a busy traffic of dry cargo ships. Naturally this region is very active. We by ourselves have a capacity of 4 million tons of loading and unloading to do therefore we have completed our studies for a very capacious port investment project. I think in 2-3 years it will be finished and it will be servicing our group as well as this country’s economy.
As someone who has worked for many years in this sector, what are its problems, how will they be overcome? Can you comment on the sector national and internationally?
Fuat TOSYALI: Essentially in our sector there isn’t any serious difficulty. As long as we are productive and not just talkative. Of course there are problems but nothing so serious that can not be overcome by working on them. In this unrelenting competitive world nobody has the luxuary of saying what are you doing, or he she is doing. We look where we go. We have left aside the traditional ways and look to the future as a customer oriented, readily analysing the demands of the market, and visionary in the sense to know what new products will be in demand and making the necessary investments accordingly. As a sector no major issues are present, all can be overcome by work. We cannot expect somebody to come and lay things in our pocket, or do things for us, not in this day and age. You have to do it yourself, what ever it is.