PepsiCo opens regional R&D center in Turkey

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

GÖKHAN KURTARAN

KOCAELİ - Hürriyet Daily News

PepsiCo prepares to develop authentic tastes for 14 countries in southeastern Europe at its brand-new R&D center in Turkey, the regional headquarters for the company. Serbian, Romanian and Israeli developers will work at the center along with Turks to form a common definition of taste for the region, says Rob Hargrove, PepsiCo’s R&D chief for Europe

PepsiCo, a worldwide leader in the snacks, food and beverage business, has opened a regional research and development center in Turkey’s northwestern province of Kocaeli to develop “unique tastes” for 14 countries.
“Today we celebrate the public announcement of our long-time dream: a research and development center in Turkey for 14 strategically important affiliated national markets for PepsiCo,” said Alexei Mekonoshin, chairman of PepsiCo Southeastern Europe at a Tuesday press meeting at the new facility.

“Turkey is a big and strategically important market for PepsiCo. Turkey, which has enjoyed strong economic growth in the past 10 years, is not only a bridge connecting continents but also an important cross-section of the cuisines from the Mediterranean to the Middle East. You have a young and dynamic population and Turkish people can easily adapt to innovative products,” he said.

“Due to a young population, Turkey’s potential for fast growth and increased consumption within Eastern Europe enables us to position the country very high,” Mekonoshin told reporters.

“[The decision] to select Turkey as a regional headquarter of 14 southeastern European countries last year is good evidence of the importance PepsiCo attaches Turkey,” the chairman said.

As the center of the southeastern European region, Turkey is one of PepsiCo Europe’s five administrative centers, along with Britain, France, Spain and Russia.

“The center we are inaugurating will provide services not only to Turkey but also to countries like Greece, Cyprus, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Romania, Bulgaria and Israel,” he said.

Regional taste preferences

“PepsiCo had a very successful 2009, even though it was defined as a crisis year worldwide,” said Rob Hargrove, PepsiCo Europe Region R&D Chief in his speech at the press meeting.

“We see R&D as one of the most important elements contributing to sustainable growth,” he said.
“The reason for choosing Turkey as the site of the center is quite simple. Turkey is seen as a market of strategic importance by PepsiCo not only for its young population [with 36 percent below the age of 19] and fast food and beverage growth, but because it is a bridge between continents and cultures,” Hargrove said.
“At the PepsiCo Turkey R&D Center, our major focus will be optimizing our products according to regional taste preferences and increasing nutritional value,” he told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review.
“We increased our research and development spending significantly,” he said, adding that the amount of the investment was to be kept confidential.

“With our 25 employees, mostly from Turkey, along with those from the U.K., Serbia, Romania and Israel, we will form a common definition of taste for southeastern Europe. We will determine the most preferred flavors in the region,” Hargrove said.

Healthier diet 

PepsiCo has already started looking for new strategies to develop healthier diets, said Hargrove. “A healthier future for all people and our planet means a more successful future for PepsiCo, this is our commitment,” he said.

According to a new road map designed and implemented in PepsiCo R&D centers, the company will increase the amount of healthy grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and low fat dairy products in all global products. Moreover, PepsiCo plans to reduce average sodium levels by 25 percent by 2015 and saturated fat levels by 15 percent by 2020.

“The amount of added sugar in key global beverage brands will be reduced by 25 percent by 2020,” Mekonoshin said.

Yacht rally starts in Aegean waters

Monday, July 19, 2010

Gökhan KURTARAN

ISTANBUL – Hürriyet Daily News

Some 40 yachts are setting sail on the turquoise waters between Greece and Turkey for 5th International Aegean Yacht Rally 2010. The rally stated on July 18 and will end July 30, organizer Setur Marinas told a press conference at Kalamış Divan Brasserie in Istanbul last week.
Setur announced that the rally was sponsored by worldwide brands such as Alfa Romeo, Turkey’s largest maker of household appliances Arçelik, leader in the LPG sector AYGAZ, and Turkish fuel oil distribution company OPET.
Necati Demirkıran, Commodore of the rally, said that after the official opening ceremony on July 17 in Kuşadası, the course of the rally would take the yachts to the islands of Samos, Levros, Simi and Rhodes and would end in the Turkish water at the Marmaris Netsel Marina on July 30.
He said, “We are tying to set sail to friendship and enjoy it under the wings of peace on the Aegean Sea.” Demirkıran also said the famous first Turkish sailor who traveled around the world in the 1960’s, Sadun Bora, will be an honorary guest at the rally.
According to a statement, Rahmi Koç, prominent businessmen and chairman of Koç Holding, will compete in the rally on his vessel “Nazenin V”, which was designed by Sparkman & Stepson in New York City and built by RMK Yachts at the naval docks of Tuzla, a northwestern province of Istanbul.
The super yacht was awarded a special commendation reserved for sailing yachts over 45 meters for her outstanding design, excellent execution and for meeting the owner’s requirements perfectly.
“We wanted to sponsor the rally in order to see local and international yachters start new friendships, to support yachting sports and most importantly to contribute to peace in the Aegean Sea,” said Melis Mutus, director of corporate communications at Arçelik, at the press meeting.
“We are aware that speed and desire are not just made for land. Alfa Romeo has always scored several great achievements in all motor sports as well as yachting,” Arzu Çolakoğlu, brand director of Alfa Romeo & Lancia, said.
“For around half a century, we have been transporting oil through our sea fleet and carried our energy ashore. We are aware that seas of the country hold major importance and virtue as well as the beautiful lands that we have,” Devrim Çubukçu, director of corporate communications of Aygaz, said at the press meeting.
“We believe that water sports should be supported more since our country is surrounded by three seas that have a significant role in trade as well, said OPET’s director of corporate communications, Ayşegül Aydın.
Participants of the rally will have adequate time to visit the beautiful islands of Greece and enjoy amazing Turkish coastal towns and harbors during the 13 day competition. Participants will spend three days at Samos, two days at Leros, two days at Simi and three days at Rhodes. Forty yachts and 300 crewmembers are participating in the rally this year.

Anatolia’s İttifak moves to Istanbul

Friday, July 16, 2010 

GÖKHAN KURTARAN

KONYA - Hürriyet Daily News 

 

 

İttifak Holding, an Anatolian company operating in food, machinery and shopping mall construction, has decided to move its headquarters from Konya province to Istanbul and aims for 1 billion Turkish Liras in revenue by the end of 2011.

“Everything started about 20 years ago when 20 local entrepreneurs came together and founded the “İttifak” (alliance),” said Mehmet Buğa, the chairman of İttifak Holding at a press conference Thursday. “Now the holding has reached around 790 million Turkish Liras revenue with 20,000 shareholders and more than 5,000 employees.
“İttifak Holding is a good example of individual achievements evolving into institutional success by developing an extensive and well-established institutional culture in collaboration with tens of thousands of partners and thousands of suppliers and employees in various sectors,” said Buğa.
İttifak’s Adese, a chain of shopping centers, operates 128 stores in seven cities around Turkey. Ramazan Keser, chairman of the executive board, said new stores would be added to Adese, giving priority to investment in big cities such as Ankara and Istanbul to meet high market demand in the sector. “Adese had over 30 million customers during 2009 with total sales revenue around 528 million liras and it will go on growing.”
Speaking of the ever-growing Selva Food Company, Keser said: “It is the biggest Turkish brand of pasta, exporting to over 60 countries. The company ranks among the top 500 companies in Turkey and achieved around 92 million liras in total sales revenue during last year.”
İmaş, İttifak’s machinery investment group, produces integrated machinery systems under Millereal and Cuteral brands. Talking on the potential of the company, Keser said it builds up technical cutting machinery systems for various factories and already has more than a 15 percent share in the sector with total sales revenue of around 25 million liras during 2009. “More than 70 percent of the machines are exported to over 40 countries in Europe, United States and Middle East,” said Keser.
Figures from last year show a sharp decrease in the total exports of the holding due to the global financial crisis that hit Turkey. The holding had achieved $41.5 million in exports during 2008, but last year total exports went down sharply by $30.3 million, meaning a loss of $11.2 million.
“This downfall was mainly caused by the well-known effects of the economic crisis on all sectors, but we will keep increasing our exports and are aiming for around $50 million total export by the end of this year,” Keser told the Hürriyet Daily News and Economic Review.

Holding expands in Saudi Arabia

Seha Yapı, the holding’s construction company, operates in major residential projects both in the capital city Ankara and central province of Konya. The company is now preparing to operate in Saudi Arabia with a newly founded company, Keser said.
“We were having difficulties obtaining contracts for construction there due to the geographical distance, but with the new country we would like to be more active in Saudi Arabia and in the region,” he said.
Established in 1988 and then becoming a holding in 1993, İttifak Holding is also registered with the capital markets board of Turkey in order to be a publicly held company.

Global welding industry to gather in Istanbul

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

GÖKHAN KURTARAN

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

More than 700 international experts, academics and researchers from the global welding industry will meet in Istanbul for the 63rd annual assembly of the International Institute of Welding, or IIW.

The assembly, which will be attended by guests from 53 countries, will be conducted Thursday.
Top officials, including State Minister Nihat Ergün and Ulrich Dilthey, chairman of IIW and Halil Kaya Gedik, the honorary chairman of Gedik Holding, met with journalists on Sunday to describe the event.

“A year ago in the annual meeting in Singapore, we were living the hard days of the economic crisis and I said there that we would come out of the crisis with our enthusiasm and dynamism." said Dilthey.
“Turkish companies were able to participate in major international engineering projects as Turkey began to compete with rival economies,” said Hülya Gedik, chairwoman of Gedik Holding’s education and social benefits foundation.

Speaking to the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review on the potential of welding in Turkey, Gedik said: “We have observed a great potential for welding here, nearly $800 million per annum. We must develop welding machines, machines of automation and robotics in order to raise Turkish competence by benefiting from Turkey’s innovative skills.”

“I am proud to see this conference being held in Istanbul,” said Ergün. “There are certain inventions in the world but nobody realizes their significance at first sight. Welding is one of them. Without welding, there would be no industry at all.”

Expecting strong growth

“While moving on the way to becoming a leading economy, Turkey is realizing the importance of welding technologies,” the minister said. “The Turkish economy has already overcome its long-lasting structural problems from 2002. Inflation and interest rates went down rapidly and both the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the International Monetary Fund have announced that the estimated growth for 2010 is around 7 percent.”

Turkey aims to reach an export volume of $500 billion by 2023, the year the Turkish Republic will celebrate its 100th anniversary, Ergün said.

“I am coming from an industrial city which has welding technologies applied frequently,” said Alan Mcleod, a metallurgist and researcher from the University of Australia. “But my country seems to be losing its ground in welding because of the low cost of labor in Asian countries. I assume Turkey has such an advantage too,” he told the Daily News.

Hee Kim, director of a reliability assessment center for metallic materials from the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology, meanwhile, said the United States had fallen behind Japan, South Korea and China in welding.
“Many people talk about welding and the low cost of labor, but what they need to see is that welding is now technology-intensive. It is not just based on labor force anymore,” he told the Daily News.

During the IIW’s meeting, hundreds of research, engineering, best practice and standardization documents will be presented and discussed at technical commissions. International delegates and experts representing academia, research and industry will participate in the event, exchanging knowledge.
The annual assembly will continue until July 16.

Swiss pharma firm enters Turkish market

Swiss pharmaceuticals company Nycomed, which has specialized in gastrointestinal respiratory and inflammatory diseases and tissue management, has entered the Turkish market with its own brand name. The company targets $25 million in revenues this year, according to a press conference held Thursday in Istanbul.
Nycomed, headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, achieved nearly $3.2 billion in net turnover by 2009 on a global level. The firm has invested more than $15 million in Turkey, according to executive vice president Guido Oelkers, who said that the firm is hopeful to become a key player in Turkey with its gastrointestinal medicine “Pantas” and painkiller “Xefo.”

“We are operating in more than 50 markets and now we are in Turkey, one of the fastest growing markets of the world,” Oelkers said. He emphasized that the Daxas medicine will be the vehicle to drive Nycomed’s growth in Turkey.

“There are more than 1.5 million diagnosed patients of chronic obstructive lung disease, or COPD, in Turkey,” said Oelkers. “The total value of the COPD market in Turkey is nearly $190 million, due to the smoking habits of Turks.”

A lucrative market

Speaking to Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review on the sidelines of the press conference, Oelkers said the firm targets $25 million in revenues this year.
“But in the next three years we would to like make this figure $100 million,” he said. “Turkey was ranked as the 18th biggest medicine market in 2003. Today it is 12th. We wish to be an active player in Turkey as well as China and Brazil.”

Figures show that more than 70 percent of Nycomed’s total growth is driven by emerging markets.
“The Turkish medicine market has an annual volume of $12.5 billion, while annual medical expenses per capita are $135,” said Bedri Toker, chairman of Nycomed Turkey. “This is certainly worth investing.” Toker added that the projections of the firm demonstrate that per capita spending will increase to $200 in the next five years.

Toker also said that the firm is open for cooperation and partnership for presenting its new medicine, Daxas, to the Turkish market.Nycomed started its Turkey operations at the end of last year and has employed nearly 130 people.