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Cutting Steel on the Bosporus
In 2004, Tufan Demir Çelik A.S. was the first Turkish company
to buy a laser cutting machine from Bystronic.
Now the company has put a BySprint Fiber 3015 laser cutting
machine into service.
Text: Jürgen Gottschlich, Photos: Jodi Hilton
Tufan Demir Çelik Turkey
The job shop of the company Tufan Demir Çelik A.S. on the Ikitelli industrial estate in Istanbul.
“The first
Bystronic
machine made
it possible to
keep up with the
then-booming
Turkish
­economy.”
Ihsan Danacioğlu
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“Our customers place g reat value in
precision. With us, it has always been a question
of millimeter work. If something were not ex­
actly right, we would soon have our share of
complaints. However, thanks to our Bystronic laser
cutting systems, it is a long time since that has
happened,” Ihsan Danacioğlu says. He and his son
Sinan are owners of the company Tufan Demir
Çelik A.S., and they are keen to show their satis­
faction with their new BySprint Fiber 3015, in­
stalled just two months ago. The two men are
standing in one of the three small factory buildings
that belong to the family company. Besides the
BySprint Fiber, this building also houses a Bystronic
Byspeed 3015 laser cutting machine. Add to these
the various piles of assorted stainless steel and alu­
minum sheets, and the small factory is rather full.
Tufan Demir Çelik A.S. is a job shop, employing
55 people. It is situated in the center of Ikitelli –
one of Istanbul’s largest industrial estates, but also
one of the city’s longest established. At a first
glance, Ikitelli appears to be composed of a wild
array of garage-based companies: a rather confus­
ing jumble of streets, where one workshop is fol­
lowed by another, and it is not always clear where
one company ends and the next one begins. This
pressing closeness is the result of enormous
growth, both on the industrial estate and in the
surrounding city.
On the pulse of the Turkish economy
Located just a few kilometers from Istanbul’s
Atatürk airport, Ikitelli was originally well outside
of the city; however, Istanbul’s enormous growth
means that the workshops and factories have
since become virtually surrounded by newly built
living accommodation. The industrial estate is
typical of Turkey, but it is considerably larger than
the majority of such sites. According to Sinan
­Danacioğlu, it is home to around 40,000 small­to-medium-sized businesses. These range from
small workshops to larger medium-sized produc­
tion plants like that of Tufan. The various buildings
are grouped according to function: For example,
other metal processing factories surround Tufan.
However, within view are shoe manufacturers,
garages and chemical plants. It is such industrial
estates that form the backbone of the Turkish
economy.
The Tufan offices, where the company’s manage­
ment, sales staff and software engineers are
based, are directly over the production halls.
BystronicWorld 1/2013
Father and son, Ihsan and Sinan Danacioğlu, in front of their new BySprint Fiber 3015.
In his office – where plans for the company’s
development are made – Junior Manager Sinan
Danacioğlu expands on why he is so delighted
with the new Bystronic laser cutting machine: “The
BySprint Fiber is unbelievably efficient, fast and
flexible. It has even exceeded our expectations.”
In order to illustrate his point, he tells us a story
about something that happened two weeks previously: “On the Monday morning in question,
three Russian businessmen with whom we had
never worked before, appeared at our office.
They wanted to place a large order for special
metal parts that they wanted immediately for a
building project in Kazakhstan. The parts were to
be delivered within three days. It took us a day and
a half to do the joint planning and the programming of the software, and then our new Bystronic
took over the job. By Wednesday evening, we
could deliver the parts to the airport. Our customers were delighted.”
From steel merchant
to sheet metal processor
This story illustrates what is important to Tufan –
speed, flexibility and precision: “We produce highend steel products that are manufactured accord-
BystronicWorld 1/2013
ing to exact customer specifications. Quantities
range from just 20 or 30 parts to several hundred,
sometimes as many as several thousand, but we
do not do the automated manufacturing of mass-­
produced goods. We are all-rounders,” says Sinan
Danacioğlu.
Tufan Demir Çelik A.S. is a family-run company,
founded in the mid-1970s by Ihsan Danacioğlu
and his brother. At the time, the company was just
a steel merchant: “We bought steel both at home
and abroad, and sold it on to state-run businesses.”
This changed in the 1980s, when Turkey opened
what previously had been primarily a state-run
economy to the private sector. It also began privatizing its state-run companies. “Our customers
increasingly expected us to deliver finished products and we adapted according to those wishes,”
Ihsan Danacioğlu explains.
The head of Tufan is proud that his employees –
who also played a large part in the company’s
success – are happy working there. Some employees have worked at the company for over 25
years. Tufan trains its new generations of workers
itself. According to the company’s senior manager, “This is important for the quality of production
and anchoring the company culture.”
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Steel sheets are transported to the workshop, where they will be processed using Bystronic laser cutting machines (above).
Housings, produced for an electronics company, are ready to be transported (below).
Tufan Demir Çelik Turkey
Precision is essential: “With us, it has always been a question of millimeter work,” says Ihsan Danacioğlu.
Shopping malls and bus stops
In 2004 Tufan was the very first company in
Turkey to purchase a laser cutting machine from
Bystronic. “We have not regretted doing so for a
single day,” states Ihsan Danacioğlu. “The machine
made it possible to keep up with the then­booming Turkish economy.” Between the start of
the new millennium and 2008 – but especially
after Turkey overcame a homemade national
banking crisis in 2001 – the country’s economy
regularly showed annual growth of between 8 and
10 percent. One boom sector, even today, is the
building industry. “In the last ten years, thousands
of shopping centers have been built in Turkey;
they incorporate countless stainless steel parts
from our factory,” explains Junior Manager Sinan
Danacioğlu. Last year Tufan reported a turnover of
18 million US dollars. The worldwide economic
downturn in 2008 did not leave Turkey completely
untouched. The country’s annual growth fell by
half, but it still remains at around 4 percent, with
an upward trend: “The market will recover,” says
Sinan Danacioğlu with conviction.
At present Tufan is producing the steel frames for
seats to go in the large cinemas that are a standard
feature of many shopping malls. The company is
also producing steel parts for bus stops, required
by the public transport companies in many Turkish
municipalities for modernizing their local public
transport systems.
BystronicWorld 1/2013
“The BySprint Fiber has even
exceeded our expectations.”
Sinan Danacioğlu
“But we also manufacture special parts for textile
machinery, or for manufacturers of electronic
goods,” Sinan Danacioğlu adds. “All applications
that require a great deal of know-how, and
demand precise work.”
At present three Bystronic machines are in opera­
tion at Tufan: the new BySprint Fiber 3015 with
3 kilowatts of power, a Bystar 4020 with 4.4 kilo­
watts, and a Byspeed 3015 with 4.4 kilowatts. The
Byspeed and BySprint Fiber are located together in
one of the halls. “Here we have a diesel car
standing next to one powered by electricity,” says
Mustafa Kizilcik, Managing Director of Bystronic
Turkey, summarizing the contrast between the
two machines. "The Byspeed, the diesel, is better
suited to cutting steel up to a thickness of 25 milli­
meters; however, for thinner sheet steel – and
especially for aluminum, copper and brass – the
BySprint F­ iber is unbeatable," explains Kizilcik.
Praising the BySprint Fiber, Sinan Danacioğlu says:
“It is faster, consumes less energy and takes up less
space, which is very important for us.”
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With the Bystar 4020 Tufan is able to cut steel sheets measuring 4 by 2 meters, and up to a thickness of 25 millimeters.
Flexibility is one of the strengths of Tufan Demir Çelik A.S.: This leads to a wide variety of cut parts.
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BystronicWorld 1/2013
Tufan Demir Çelik Turkey
Quickly over borders
With Mustafa Kizilcik’s assistance, Tufan sold one
of its older machines to another company; thereby
clearing space for its new BySprint Fiber 3015. The
company could have bought a fiber laser cutting
machine from a local manufacturer for considerably less money, but the Danacioğlu family wanted to stick with Bystronic. Junior Manager Sinan
Danacioğlu sums up this decision, saying,
“Bystronic not only supplies the machine, it also
provides the whole package. Besides the machine,
there is a team providing support with it.” If he has
a problem, Bystronic is immediately on hand to
help. “We cannot afford to allow a machine to
stand idle for a whole day. Two hours are already
two hours too many.” According to Sinan Danacioğlu, Bystronic’s service people will come immediately to site, solving any problem in a minimum
of time. The same applies for purchasing spare
parts: “I do not know how they do it,” he says. “But
they are able to get spare parts from Switzerland
and through customs in just a few hours.” For
anyone who has ever had any involvement with
the Turkish customs authority, such praise is the
highest of accolades.
A pioneer for Bystronic in Turkey
This year – with assistance from Bystronic – Tufan
is preparing to make a major leap towards the
future. The driving force behind it is the company’s
Junior Manager Sinan Danacioğlu. Unlike his father and uncle, who founded the company almost
40 years ago, Sinan Danacioğlu is not a self-made
man. He is, however, a well-trained manager. After studying in Chicago, he gained his first business
experience working for a bank in the USA. Two
years ago, his father brought him back to Turkey to
start his training, so that one day he would be
ready to take over the business. The expansion of
the company this year will be his first important
test.
Tufan plans to expand to the Asiatic side of Istanbul, and it has secured an 11,500 square-meter
plot of land in the Gebze industrial park, located
in a suburb of Istanbul on the Marmara Sea. The
Gebze industrial park has been developed over the
last few years and is one of the largest of its kind in
Turkey – if not the largest. And unlike Ikitelli, there
are no small workshops: only medium-sized to
large companies. “In Gebze we want to establish a
situation where, in future, we will also be able
to supply large customers from the automobile,
shipbuilding or defense industries,” states Ihsan
Danacioğlu.
“We are fully convinced that the Turkish economy,
but also those of Turkey’s neighbors, will again
experience strong growth in the coming years,” his
son Sinan adds. “We must remain competitive.”
The location is ideal. The freeway, a railroad
connection, and a harbor on the Marmara Sea
– everything is in the immediate vicinity. Both
the steel works and the new aluminum plant in
BystronicWorld 1/2013
The Byspeed 3015 that Tufan bought in 2004 was the first
Bystronic ­laser cutting machine in the whole of Turkey.
Adapazari – just to the east of Istanbul – can be
supplied by freight train from the Gebze industrial
park. The new location should also give a boost to
Tufan’s exports.
The infrastructure at Gebze is still being built, but
the Danacioğlu family hopes to start setting up
the machine park towards the end of the year. As
part of this, they still want to rely on Bystronic for
their new laser cutting machines: “As far as the
workforce and the machine park are concerned,
we will double our current position,” predicts
Sinan Danacioğlu.
Mustafa Kizilcik from Bystronic Turkey knows what
he can expect. “We are delighted about the impending expansion of our cooperation,” he says.
“Tufan Demir Çelik A.S. was a pioneer for Bystronic
in Turkey, and this will also continue in the future.”
“We are fully
convinced
that the
Turkish
economy
will grow.”
Ihsan Danacioğlu
Jürgen Gottschlich, cofounder of the German newspaper “taz,” is an author, journalist, and publicist.
The recognized expert on Turkey has worked in
Istanbul for 14 years as a correspondent for various
German, Austrian and Swiss newspapers.
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