Ismail ACAR, Sales Manager in SKC KARBON Electrical and Mechanical Applications:

Started in 1999 as a representative of SGL Carbon, Germany, and by processing carbon-graphite raw materials for the industry, our company continues to serve with our machinery, laboratory testing media, high quality of workmanship, and experience accumulated over 17 years.
Refusing to compromise on quality of raw materials and workmanship despite the difficulties in the current state of business, our company also continues to make state-of-art investments. After stating that the company will continue to do its business in Akpınar industrial zone, Istanbul, in early October 2017 with 50% capacity expansion after almost 17 years doing business in our factory in Sefakoy, Istanbul, Ismail Acar answered our questions regarding the sector:
What can you say about your SKC CARBON Firm?
Started in 1999 as a representative of SGL Carbon, Germany, and by processing carbon graphite raw materials for the industry, our company continues to serve with our machinery, laboratory testing media, high quality of workmanship, and experience accumulated over 17 years. Refusing to compromise on quality of raw materials and workmanship despite the difficulties in the current state of business, our company also continues to make state-of-art investments. The company will continue to do its business in Akpınar industrial zone, Istanbul, in early October 2017 with 50% capacity expansion after almost 17 years of doing business in our factory in Sefakoy, Istanbul.
What is your product range? What can you tell us about the features of your products?
Manufacturing of carbon brushes for different types of engines has started in early 70s and developed to these days. Pantograph carbon strips, third rails shoes and shoe gears, grounding coals and coal units together with the brush holder group are handled with care and superior quality to keep up with the ever-developing rail systems. Also included in our product range are sealing and bearing products and graphite pallet coals for dry type pumps, and RAM bearing rail coals, wheel lubrication bars which also provide lubrication. High temperature applications is one of our essential manufacturing topics which started with being a representative of SGL. (Glass, Aluminium, Sinter, Furnace applications, etc…) With the support we receive from our supplier, we also provide the sector with carbon composite high-tech products.
How do you find your position in the market? What are you doing in terms of market development?
As one of the major companies of the sector, we are proud to be the only Turkish company that operates on 100% percent domestic capital. Despite the advantages of our rival international companies we have a strong position in the industry. We aim to increase our advertising and promotional activities by participating in the industrial fairs with our trained staff who are able to give technical support to the sector, and also by featuring in the industrial magazines. In the end, it’s not always possible to visit every one of the companies located in our geography. Consequently, it’s equally impossible for each user to visit us and see our advantages in-situ, no matter how we wish this to be true. We think that we should focus on promotional activities to create an awareness about our qualified manpower.
Can you tell us about the position of your company in domestic and international market?
We can say that in the period of 17 years we reached a certain point in the Turkish market. However, we need to move our quality and qualified manpower beyond our boundaries. In recent years, we established serious connections, particularly with European and Arab countries, and we aim to increase our export. Currently, among the countries to which we export our products are Belgium, Portugues, germany, Russia, UAE, and France.
What are your targets for 2017?
We achieved our targets for 2016 two months before the year-end. We’ll work to capture the same stability toward growth in 2017. As a manufacturer with a comprehensive product range, our expectations for the domestic market is coming true, however, in financial context, we are unable to find sufficient reliability in the domestic market, and this, sometimes, cause us to compromise our sales target in order to maintain the balance. Therefore, we intend to focus more on export in 2017. We also aim to increase the coverage of our high-tech products. 2017 will be a year during which we increase our machinery investments. We hope to strengthen our presence and capacity in manufacturing products with more sensitive and qualified nature.
Last words?
We still have some products that we aren’t able to manufacture, but import instead. We hope to become able to manufacture such products in the next couple years. We are aware of the collective targets as a country. It’s not just our company’s target but also our nationalist spirit’s and national will to contribute in a collective understanding by which nationalization is supported, and to execute value added projects as well as to contribute to our economy. We sincerely wish success to other companies who operate and contribute in that regard. Stay well.