The company, which produces ceramic products with local resources in Erciyes Teknopark, has started shelf production

A company operating within the Erciyes Teknopark in Kayseri has started to produce shelves from plates developed with domestic means in kilns where ceramic products are fired at 1200 degrees, with state support.

The company, which was established 9 months ago in Erciyes Teknopark with an equity investment of over 10 million liras and received 500 thousand liras of support within the scope of the R&D, ÜR-D and Innovation Support Program of the Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises Development and Support Administration (KOSGEB), sells its products to domestic companies and manufacturers.

Dr. Levent Şendoğdular, from the Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering at Erciyes University Faculty of Engineering, told AA that he completed his master’s and doctorate in the USA with a state scholarship.

Şendoğdular stated that they turned to this field after realizing that the country had technical deficiencies in these sectors during their consultancy services to companies in Turkey, and that Turkey is one of the major suppliers of Europe in the ceramics sector.

“We have entered into efforts to nationalize this product”

However, Şendoğdular emphasized that they do not have as much control over the machines and infrastructure as they do over the products they produce, and said, “We cannot produce the high-heat resistance furnace materials used in the machines, we mostly import them. We have made an effort to localize this product, to carry out these studies from raw material to final product in our own country, within our own organization, with our own human resources. In this context, together with businessman İlhan Kargın, we have created a plan that initially covers 3 years and approximately 50 million liras of investment. We are currently in the ninth month of these efforts. Our company is the embodiment of university-industry cooperation.”

Şendoğdular stated that they produce kiln equipment such as shelves, shelf legs and kiln bricks in various sizes from recipes consisting of a mixture of different ceramic raw materials, and continued his words as follows:

“The most basic material in the recipe of the plate we make is alumina (aluminum oxide). Alumina is one of the materials with high thermal resistance and shock resistance that is already known in this sector. Alumina is not a plastic material. Plastic ceramic materials are materials that can be shaped and mudified with water. You cannot shape alumina with water. There are binding materials here. We also synthesize polymeric binders ourselves. We use polymeric binders in the plastic shaping of alumina in our own production.”

“We aim to provide the greatest benefit in closing the technical gap of our country”

Şendoğdular, who explained that they bake the different plates they make in the company they established within Erciyes Teknopark in ovens at 1350 degrees, stated that in this context, they have the highest strength plate available on the market.

Pointing out that they are the only manufacturer in this field in Turkey, Şendoğdular said, “Our products are currently being used in the Kütahya region, the Istanbul region, Ankara and especially İznik and Menemen in the tile, ceramic, hobby sector and in every field where these are active.”

Şendoğdular stated that the prices of their products are much more affordable than imported products and noted the following:

“We are an R&D company. As a first step, we started to quickly meet the needs of the sector. In fact, we want to become a company that produces advanced technology ceramics for the defense industry and even take it a step further and meet the technical and advanced technology ceramic needs in the aviation and automotive sectors. In the first stage, we moved forward in this way because the ceramic sector is the one that needs these products the most. The point we want to reach in terms of product development, potential and capacity is more technological. We aim to provide the greatest benefit in closing the technical gap of our country.”