Şükrü Kakillioğlu, Deputy General Manager in charge of Commerce of Hes Kablo “Our primary target is to increase our export rate up to 50% of our revenue at least, which is now about 30%, in the medium term.

There are no domestic audiences that we have not been able to access. We provide service throughout the country, with our strong and widespread dealer network. Our close relationship with our corporate customers, who prioritize the quality, will continue in the future.
We continue seeking for new foreign markets.” Kakillioğlu, who says that they will compensate their sales loss due to the instability environment in the region by establishing new markets, replied our magazine’s questions.
How was 2015 for your company? Could you achieve your targets? What are your expectations for 2016?
We can say that we are close to our target, when considering the first three quarters of the year. Particularly due to the unfortunates in the close regions, including Iraq, we had somewhat deviations in our export target. As a leading cable and wire producer in Turkey, today we sell cable and wire to 130 countries over all continentals. We aim to increase our export rate up to 50% of our revenue at least, which is now about 30%, in the medium term. We target to continue our stable growth in 2016 as well.
Hes Kablo has operated in the sector for long years. From this point of view, could you tell us about the competition advantage and corporate identity of your company?
We are the most known and preferred company in the sector we provide service. Behind our leadership in the sector lies proper and quality product presentation to the customers by following the needs of the sector as well as our production of copper and aluminum wire rod, PVC and HFFR granule that are the raw materials of filling/cover/insulation materials and manufacturing of quill, chest and pallet that are packaging materials, in our integrated facilities. The cable and wire industry is open for improvement and a progressive sector… In this point of view, it is an absolute must to consider the requirements of the age, understand the technological needs and be one step ahead when building the future. In order to keep up with our leadership position and make it permanent, we pay great importance to R&D and Production & Development. Thanks to this structure of us, we are able to rapidly respond the customer demands. As an innovative and assuring company, our structure provides us to be preferred by the consumers and protection of our brand value. In addition, every brand should invest for its brand in order to keep its place in the sector. With our innovations, the technologies we have developed and both pre-sales and aftersales services we provide, we keep our brand continuously dynamic. We are at the 68th line in the list of ISO 500, which was published recently. This is a proof of our leadership in the cable and wire sector for 11 years since 2004, and we keep our seat in the ISO.
Could you make a market analysis in terms of the cable and wire sector? What kind of developments occurs in the main markets?
Since the production capacity of the cable and wire industry is extremely over the demand, there is a severe competition in the sector and therefore the profitability is at the minimum level. Examining the first and second 500 lists of ISO, the fact that the cable and wire companies have high revenues despite of low profitability is the obvious proof of this case. Another cause of the low profitability is the companies producing nonstandard cheaper products, and therefore bringing down the prices.
We cannot say that there is a huge deficiency about the cable and wire standard on the contrary to the many other field in our country. The main difficulty is that some companies purposefully produce nonstandard products to lower the costs and that the consumers demand the said products as a result of price-focused preference. At this point, the consumer’s part is to prefer the branded and certificated products. It should be reminded that the poor quality products purchased in order to lower the costs influence every field of the life, particularly the human life. We hope that the companies producing nonstandard products will be eliminated from the market upon increase in the level of education, awareness of the users and corporation of the purchasing companies, and therefore the reasonable level will be achieved in terms of profitability-competition.
The profit rate of cable and wire producers gradually decreases; what is your prediction about this issue?
The cable and wire industry is a sector having a severe competition and therefore low profitability despite of high revenues. In addition to this, the volatilities in metal prices and exchange rate increase the risk. Also, considering that the cable and wire are sold for 2-3 month maturity, the producers who are not strong enough to overcome these difficulties and risk have lower chance to survive. Some of small companies aim to continue their activities by producing nonstandard products to lower the prices, which constitutes an unfair competition, but I think both the inspections and user’s preferences will not permit them. As a result, the small and weak players will be eliminated, we guess.
What kind of strategy will you follow in 2016? Are there any new markets that you plan to break into?
There are no domestic audiences that we have not been able to access. We provide service throughout the country, with our strong and widespread dealer network.
Our close relationship with our corporate customers, who prioritize the quality, will continue in the future. We continue seeking for new foreign markets. We aim to compensate their sales loss due to the instability environment in the region by establishing new markets