This is a news headline. Chairman of the board of Botersan, Mr. Ercüment Birsen answered our questions.

In our interview, Chairman of the Board of Botersan, Mr. Ercüment Birsen answered our questions. Mr. Birsen provided information about products and services offered by Botersan.

Could you please briefly tell us about your educational and professional background?

I was born in Pristina (Kosovo) on 25 February 1946. After living 11 years in Pristina, as free immigrants we emigrated to Turkey on 18 February 1957. I studied at Meto Bayraktar Primary School in Pristina. I have been living in Istanbul since 1957. Respectively, I graduated from Gedik Paşa Secondary School, İstanbul Boys' High School and Istanbul Technical University, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, in 1968. My business life started in 1968 at the Maritime Bank (Denizcilik Bankası) Camialtı shipyard. After fulfilling my military obligation as a reserve officer between 1969-1971, I continued my duty at Camialtı shipyard. After I decided to move to the private sector in 1974, I worked for Karmasan Company for 10 months. Between 1975 and 1984, I worked for Alarko companies Almim, Alamsaş and Alsaç, respectively. In early 1984, with my three friends whom I met from Alarko, I established Botersan A.Ş. Since 1983, I have been serving as Chairman of the Board of Directors of our company.

Could you please give information about Botersan's history and milestones? What is the current structure of Botersan today?

Serving in the surface treatment sector, which is a very demanding field of work, Botersan's success today is based on the fact that Botersan is managed by 4 professional Alarko-based colleagues, each of whom heads their respective business areas. I am responsible for management and projects. Bekir Alparslan is responsible for design. Orhan Özçanak is in charge of manufacturing. Tevfik Alpsar is responsible for assembly. Founded 36 years ago in a small project office in Samatya, Botersan moved to Bayrampaşa's 4-storey production site in 1985. In 1990, Botersan relocated to the prefabricated building in Beylikdüzü to better handle large and bulky projects. In order to better serve its customers in 2002, it improved its machinery and built a new building on the rear side of its existing facility, increasing its capacity and indoor area from 3,500 m² to 11,000 m². It produces turnkey solutions in its modern production facilities.

To which industries and with what kind of products does Botersan mainly serve? Could you please give information about Botersan's products, brands and services?

With its 36 years of knowledge, experience and strong references, our Company serves a wide range of industries including the metal industry, automotive and automotive supply industry, white goods, wood and plastic industries. By expanding its product range since foundation, the main production focus of Botersan is paint shops, which can be summarized into seven main branches: surface cleaning, wet painting booths, powder painting booths, electrocoating paint, drying and baking furnaces, and conveyors. Surface treatment, the first stage of surface treatment, is divided into two types: dipping and spray tunnel type. Iron phosphating, zinc phosphating or chromating processes and nanotechnology solutions are applied considering the environment, material structure and desired corrosion resistance of the part. Painting, the stage after surface cleaning, can be grouped as wet and powder coating. Wet painting is performed in a wide range of environmentally friendly and highly efficient Botersan wet paint booths - water curtain, positive pressure venturi washing system and dry type - providing a quiet and clean working environment without paint disposal outside the factory. Botersan has held a leading position in Turkey for powder coating applications. In powder coating applications, Botersan has increased paint application quality in hundreds of facilities it has established with powder coating booths equipped with cartridge and sintered lamella filters.

One of the latest and most advanced coating technologies in our country and worldwide is electrostatic coating application - an electrocoating process based on electrochemistry principles.

In electrocoating paint, all parts can be coated equally and completely across the whole body, providing high efficiency with high corrosion resistance and recovery system. As a water-based system, it is an application sought by many sectors due to its superior and technological features such as creating less environmental pollution and having lower fire risk. Botersan's experience and quality with turnkey electrocoating paint systems reliably apply its solutions. For drying and baking parts before and after painting, Botersan manufactures drying, wet and powder coating furnaces as modular units. Both continuous and box type applications are available. One of the most important elements required for coating lines for continuous coating is the conveyor. The initial design and manufacturing of Webb type and Cardain type conveyor trolley trains in Turkey were first carried out by our company. The multicyclone and filtered type paint booths were also first designed and manufactured in 1986-1987 by Botersan. The conveyor systems in our complete paint shop solutions have the quality of Botersan. Besides all these, our company produces all kinds of fans, heat generators, uniaxial painting robots and electrical panels used in our systems.

Could you please tell about your domestic and international sales activities? To which regions and what kind of products does Botersan mainly sell?

Our company, which had been serving mainly the domestic market until the last 10 years, after completing ISO and CE studies in 2007, has focused on projects abroad. Our company, which has been renewing itself to world standards by transitioning to ISO 9001-2015 system and CE 2006-42 directive, has signed a number of high-capacity facilities in recent years, such as Azenco/Azerbaijan, Prime/Ukraine, Rock Scale/Kuwait, First Gas/Egypt, Repkon/Iraq and Repkon/Bangladesh. Our main export countries are Bulgaria, Egypt, Azerbaijan, Jordan, Algeria, Tunisia, Russia, Ukraine, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Qatar, France, Germany, Romania and Bangladesh.

Could you please give information about Botersan's innovation and R&D studies? Do you have any projects developed through university-industry cooperation?

To serve especially the domestic and foreign market at low cost with high-technology and quality products, our company continuously works on innovation. Botersan is also supported by KOSGEB for R&D studies. Our various R&D programs and prototype works are continuing on our topics.

Can you give information about Botersan's environmental policy and sustainability approach? What kind of work and studies are performed in the area of worker health and safety?

Since its foundation, Botersan has produced environmentally friendly technologies and demonstrated its commitment to human health. We act with the belief that all occupational accidents and occupational diseases can be prevented, with the aim of creating the consciousness and culture necessary for occupational health and safety of all employees in our workplace. Our goal is to create safe and healthy working environments through emergency, business continuity and work permit systems, and in all our activities to comply with legal requirements related to occupational health and safety.

What are the priority criteria of Botersan when creating investment plans? Does Botersan have any investment plans in the near and far future?

By renewing our old machines in our machinery park, we try to follow technological developments and improve the quality of our facilities. Our investment plans are prepared on a monthly and annual basis for the coming periods. Our main goal in creating investment plans is to raise our production facility to the highest technology without compromising our existing quality.