Nazar Textile is Amongst the Successful Companies in Turkey Through its Export Performance

Founded in Kahramanmaraş in 1993, Nazar Textile continues its operations at full speed with %100 ring compact cotton yarn production. The company has a yarn production capacity of 32 tons per day and 11.350 tons per year.

Nazar Textile, whose history is based on the cotton ginning and cotton trade and specialized in cotton production, desired to transform this accumulation into yarn production and made an investment in open-end yarn manufacturing in 1993. Nazar Textile, which produces %100 percent cotton yarn in various sizes from Ne 6/1 to Ne 20/1, has strengthened its position in the international market by specializing itself in the production of open-end yarn.

Started its operations in 2015, the Ring Compact facility of the company is the largest compact ring functioning under a single roof in Turkey with its 32 thousand 500 square meters of indoor space. At the facility, 100 percent cotton yarn is produced in various sizes from Ne 24/1 to Ne 60/1.

We interviewed with Emre Balduk, the Vice Chairman of the Board of Nazar Textile, regarding the “Yarn Technologies”, a file that we have covered in this month’s issue of Tekstil Teknoloji magazine. We present it to our readers.

Could you please provide brief information about Nazar Tekstil’s dominance in the Turkish and world markets? Which countries mainly do you export to?

The authorized main supplier of Nike is our customer with the highest volume domestically. The international export customers of our company are located in Portugal, Italy, Poland, Hungary, Switzerland, France, Denmark, Germany, and Hungary. As can be seen in the presentation prepared by ITHIB, of which we are a member, regarding the textile and raw materials sector foreign trade performance in the January-September period, an export value amounting to 1 billion 12 million US Dollars was achieved between January 1 and September 21, 2020. Nazar Textile’s export revenue in the same period was around 3 million US Dollars. In other words, we have realized three units of the 1000 unit export, which was carried out by the companies in our country as Nazar Textile.

We ranked 228th in the ISO second 500 list in 2018. We ranked 257th in the list of 2019. We have Oeko-tex, GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard), USTERIZED, BCI, and COTTON USA, Rieter Com4 Compact certificates. We are also a member of ICA (International Cotton Association).

What is the daily yarn production capacity of your facility? For which sectors do you mostly produce?

At Nazar Textile, we produce 100 percent ring compact cotton yarn. Our yarn production capacity is 32 tons per day and 11.350 tons annually. Our combed cotton wastes that remain after the yarn production process are sold as ‘security paper’ to our export customers, which produce products such as banknotes, visa paper, passport paper, and to our customers producing hygienic cotton. Our combed cotton wastes production capacity is 7 tons per day and 2 thousand 500 tons annually.

As a company, what kind of studies do you carry out for natural and environmentally friendly production?

Thanks to the renewable energy production facilities that we fully own and have major shares in, we provided 83,465 mwh clean energy to the domestic electricity system in 2019. Nazar Textile consumed 45 thousand 595 mwh of electricity in 2019. If we simplify the numbers, we have provided 183 units of clean energy to the system for 100 units of electricity that we consumed in 2019.

Thanks to the solar energy with an installed on the roof of our enterprise with a capacity of 2.2 mw, we produce an average of 2 thousand 900 mwh per year, which corresponds to approximately 6 percent of the annual energy consumption of our textile business. This plant was commissioned in July 2016 and at that time bore the highest installed capacity solar power plant based on the distinction of being on one roof in Turkey.

We endeavor to apply the zero waste principle in our business. We benefit from all kinds of waste generated in our facility. With the new project we are working on, we plan to meet the needs of the enterprise arising from consumption, which is other than drinkable water, by collecting rainwater and then treating it. When this project is completed, the collected rainwater will also be used in cleaning the solar panels on our roof. We attach importance to a sustainable nature. We try to manage our waste according to this understanding.

As you know, in the normalization period of the pandemic outbreak, the textile industry has achieved great success in terms of exports. How do you evaluate the success of yarn, a sub-branch of the textile industry, at this point?

We can say that the troublesome pandemic outbreak has changed all the balances in the global market. We can observe clearly from the statistics that there is a significant increase in our technical textile exports. As can be seen in the foreign trade performance presentation for the textile and raw materials sector for the January-September period prepared by ITHIB, technical textile exports increased by 52.8 percent between 1 January and 20 September compared to the same period of the previous year. Unfortunately, yarn production, on the other hand, decreased by 23.1 percent compared to the same period of the previous year. At Nazar Textile, we are able to produce cotton yarns that can be used by woven fabric manufacturers and knitted fabric manufacturers. I can clearly state that these days, the demand for knitting yarns is much higher than for weaving yarns. The reason for this situation is probably that consumers prefer products such as t-shirts, tracksuits, and pajamas that are used for casual wear instead of trousers and shirts during this period.

Does your company have a risk plan for the second wave expected in the pandemic outbreak? What kind of endeavors do you realize on this issue?

In this period, we understood that our remote working infrastructure, which we established last year, was a very good investment. Thanks to the application where we organize correspondence, file sharing, and video meetings, we can ensure the coordination between our departments. We can access our physical servers, which are located in our factory, even if we are outside the company, thanks to a special VPN connection. We back up the data on our physical servers on cloud servers against probable risks. Thanks to the IP cameras installed in our facility, we have the opportunity to monitor our company remotely. Thanks to our online reporting system, we can instantly access important data of our company without waiting for the file to be transmitted by anyone. In order to prevent cyber-attacks, we have updated our server infrastructure. There are energy analyzers in the electrical panels in our spinning mill. We measure the energy consumption values of our production lines continuously. Our engineers constantly check for deviations in these values and see deviations in the machines. Thus, they can take the necessary measures rapidly.

How do you evaluate the first half of 2020 on behalf of your company? Can you please inform us about your expectations for 2021 and your future projects?

Our 2018 turnover was 282 million TL. While our first 6-month turnover in 2018 was 126 million TL, our first 6-month turnover in 2019 was approximately 122 million TL. Compared to the same period of the previous year, our turnover in 2020 was 110 million TL. The two biggest factors in the decline of approximately 10 percent are the measures taken against the pandemic outbreak and the closure of our Open-End yarn production facility in November 2019.

While the share of our exports in the turnover of the company was 26 percent in the first 6 months of 2018, the share of our exports in turnover in the first 6 months of 2019 was 23 percent. In the same period of 2020, this share decreased to 17 percent due to the pandemic and the closure of our Open-End facility.

We hope that the pandemic outbreak will come to an end in 2021. We have a 5.5 MWp Hybrid SPP project in the field of our 12 MW wind power plant in Kayseri, where we hold a 100% share. We plan to start the project in April 2021, after obtaining the necessary legal permissions and setting the financing model. We expect the approximate cost of the project, excluding financing, to be around 2 million 600 thousand US Dollars. Apart from that, we have an idea to create venture capital. We have the idea to identify the sectors and companies with high valuation potential and invest in seeds as an angel investor.

Interview: Kübra KARACA