Fosber has been active in Turkey, together with Teknik Kagit, since 2004. This year marks the 15th anniversary of the cooperation. During this time, the relationship between Teknit Kagit and Fosber has developed and two years ago, Fosber Turkey was established. The new organisation is being managed by Türker Argüç, who is a Managing Partner of Teknik Kagit. With a busy year ahead and with a lot of planned installations, there will be 16 plants using Fosber corrugators by the end of 2019. Today, five of the top six players in Turkey already have Fosber machines.
“The establishment of Fosber Turkey was in direct response to the growing number of customers in the market,” explains Edoardo Silvestri, Fosber Sales Director. “The company has a dedicated spare parts warehouse, as well as access to the Italian field service and customer support engineers; this allows Fosber Turkey to coordinate all technical and spare part activities to provide high-performance and low-cost ownership of Fosber machines to its customers in the region.”
The spare part warehouse is located in Istanbul, less than a one hour drive to both major airports. The warehouse is set up for delivery of parts to customers, with 24/7 delivery. “Thanks to the huge stock of available spare parts, customers can easily reduce their own spare part stock, which frees up working capital for them in general,” explains Türker Argüç, Managing Partner, Teknik Kağıt.
Thanks to the improved local support to the Turkish market, Fosber has installed five complete corrugators in last three years. “We have been really pleased with the response from the market to the extended portfolio of machine offerings,” says İlker Argüç, Managing Partner, Teknik Kağıt. “This has allowed us to take a leading position as suppliers of new corrugator equipment to the Turkish market.”
Türker Argüç adds, “The biggest advantage of Fosber in the Turkish market is our extensive experience of upgrading corrugators. For example, on several occassions, we have worked with customers who were running Asian machines; we added Fosber components and machine units over a period of time and helped them achieve higher output and better quality of board. As well as the new greenfield investment projects, this kind of upgrade Project is one of the main reasons for our success in the market. Considering there is approximately 100 corrugators in operation, many of which have small to medium capacity, the market is looking for the right partner for upgrade projects.”
Installation of the first C/Line dry-end at Akgül Ambalaj
One of the latest examples of such a project was Akgul Ambalaj. This Project saw the installation of the first C/Line dry-end, including gapless order change, that was installed within a week on an existing 1.8m Asian corrugator. The majority of production at this site is open doublewall (4ply); the customer confirmed that right after installation, they saw significant improvements on average speed and overall board quality. Other important installations in 2018 included new S/Line machines to the two leading independent companies in Turkey — Modern Ambalaj and Ankutsan/Kutay. For Modern, a 2.8m S/Line corrugator was installed and at Ankustan/Kutay, a 2.8m S/Line dry-end upgrade was successfully completed.
Silvestri concludes, “All the signs point to Turkey having a buoyant market for the coming years. Potentially, it could move up to being one of the largest corrugated board manufacturing market before 2025. Our commitment to the market is to offer a full range of Fosber machines — S/Line and C/Line — helping customers to select the right machine for the right production levels, whether that be 50 million sqm per year or 250 million sqm per year.”
