Temsad,which holds the title of being a combiner and developer in Turkey’s textile machinery industry, is known to become an indispensable path in this industry with its activities. Textile Machinery and Accessories Manufacturers Association President Adil Nalbant, answered the questions related to Turkey’s textile machinery sector through our magazine.
Can you give us some information about Textile Machinery and Accessories Industrialists Association?
The members of our association are textile mechanics, suppliers of textile machinery spare parts and textile chemists. Founded in 1998, our association has 190 members as of 2018. Textile Machinery and Accessories Industrialists Association (TEMSAD), established 20 years ago to serve the Turkish textile machinery sector, and has been promoting the sector since its inception and contributing to its development. We represent and support our domestic textile machinery manufacturers in every platform. We assist in the development and implementation of policies in line with the demands and problems of our sector in the presence of government agencies and other supporting institutions. Our board members are actively involved in organizations such as TOBB, İTO, İSO and MAİB. Hereby, our textile machinery manufacturers are represented on almost every platform. With the support of the sector at home, we continue our activities within the framework of our cooperation agreement with 18 foreign textile associations abroad. (USA, South American countries, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Iran, India, Egypt, China etc.). We help our members to expand to new regions and increase their activities in their existing markets.
What kind of activities do you carry out to introduce Turkish machines and machinery?
We are working in two different lanes for the domestic and international promotion of our sector. In order to strengthen our relations with textile manufacturers, which are addressed by domestic producers, our cooperation efforts are increasing day by day. In this context, we have demonstrated a good example of this with the cooperation we had with the Fashion Apparel Federation last year. Within the framework of this cooperation, a nice combination was obtained for the introduction of all kinds of domestic machinery and spare parts needed by textile manufacturers. In addition, we have had the opportunity to explain the advantages of domestic textile machinery together with our members in order to provide all kinds of modernization and new machinery needed by the textile finishing industry by making a cooperation protocol with the Textile Finishing Industrial Association recently. Within the framework of these collaborations, we had the opportunity to introduce our domestic and national manufacturers’ products with better quality and price advantages in response to the machinery and spare parts imported by the textile sector at high prices from abroad.
In addition to this, we contribute to the introduction of machinery and spare parts of our producers both in trade fairs and workshops in countries such as Bangladesh, India, Vietnam, Pakistan, Egypt, Iran and Uzbekistan. Our cooperation with textile companies in 18 countries is beneficial to increase the recognition of our producers abroad and their power in the market share.
What are the incentives and activities of your association if we consider the importance you place on domestic production?
As stated in the question asked about our promotional activities, we attach great importance to the cooperation we have made for the promotion and promotion of domestic products to the textile sector. Two important examples of this have been demonstrated by our cooperation with the Fashion Ready-to-Wear Federation and the Textile Finishing Industry Association. Within the framework of these collaborations, we try to provide the technical and mechanical support of our textile manufacturers together with our members. In addition to these, the incentive processes are followed with both Eximbank and Kosgeb in order to facilitate the purchases of domestic machinery. Our initiatives to ensure the necessary financial support for access to the domestic user of the machine manufactured and manufactured are expressed in every platform. In addition, we are also continuing our recommendations and initiatives to improve the protectionist measures of the Ministry of Commerce in terms of importing machinery and spare parts from abroad.
What is your opinion about the current situation and future of Turkish textile machinery sector?
We are very good in Turkish textile machinery especially in finishing machines. Our export of dye finishing machines is 2.5 times more than our imports. In addition, we have manufacturers that have the capacity to build turnkey paint shops in many regions of the world.In addition, weaving and spinning machines are the machines with the most intensive importation of our sector. Localization studies should be carried out on such machines with a good planning to turn this into our favor. Our sector grows by 20% on average each year. In addition to increasing its efficiency in the existing markets, we are also expanding our exports every year by opening new markets. However, our imports are estimated to be around $ 1.7 billion by the end of 2018. For this reason, if we do our duty to promote and promote the use of domestic machinery, we hope that this amount will decrease in the coming years.
What does TEMSAD do to achieve its 2023 objectives?
We believe that we will catch our export target of $ 1 billion in 2023. Because our export growth in the last 10 years is 20% on average each year. As of year-end 2018, we expect our exports to be around $ 750 million. According to this upward trend, we will have achieved our export target of 1 billion $ in 2023. While the export-oriented efforts of our members continue intensively, we want to realize the policies required to turn the current account balance of the sector into positive by reducing the import items as much as possible.
What is the position of Turkish textile mechanics on the global market?
The export volume of the world textile machinery market is between $ 25 billion and $ 28 billion. China, the US and India are the biggest buyers. Turkey, as a country that purchases textile machinery each year up to an amount close to $ 2 billion, has an important place in this market
What is the situation of Turkish textile machinery exports now? Which areas are most exportable?
As of the end of 2018, we have exports of $ 605 million. When we look at the export data of the first 10 months of the year, we estimate that we will complete our 2018 exports around $ 750 million. About 70% of our exports are paint finishing machines. The countries that we most export to are; Germany, France, Bangladesh, Egypt, Iran, Uzbekistan.
What are the activities of Turkish machinery sector and TEMSAD for the development of Industry 4.0?
We see that the first industrial revolutions started with the evolution of textile machinery. However, if every institution cannot show the necessary effort in raising textile machinery production and technology level, industry 4.0 will be difficult to talk about. We believe that our machinery industrialist should be supported in the technological transformation by directing our resources correctly. To do this, a quality climate should be established in all areas. This includes qualified human resources, and creating adequate budget for ar-ge. If we do not know our own potential, we will continue to be the subcontracting center as we are in the automotive industry. We also continue to import billions of dollars each year.
If we do not create our own technology, there is no way that we can develop our own brands and have a voice in the sector.
As Temsad, would you please evaluate Turkish textile machinery sector in 2018?
As of the end of September 2018, Turkish Textile Machinery and Accessory Manufacturers, we had exports of 488 million dollars in the last year (September 2017 408 million dollars) showing a 19.6% growth compared to last year. As of year-end 2018, we estimate that our exports will be $ 750 million and imports will be $ 1.7 billion depending on the increase in exchange rates. We held ITM 2018 in April 2018. This fair, where our members are satisfied, has been highly productive for our foreign visitors. ITM 2018 Exhibition, including Turkey TEMSAD our 110 members and is very successful with the participation of exhibitors from various parts of the world. On the last day of the fair, the satisfaction rate of the fair was determined as 95% according to the results of the survey conducted by 110 member companies. Our high-level guests from 18 foreign textile associations, whose representative had signed a cooperation agreement, came for ITM. Over 60 foreign guests have participated in India, Egypt, Uzbekistan, Iran and the United States. Furthermore, a cooperation agreement was signed between TEMSAD and Uzbekistan Textile Association at the opening dinner of the fair. In addition, our sector has been successful in 2018. One of them is Canlar Mechatronics’ acquisition of Brazzoli, one of the Italian textile machinery leaders. We also observe that other members of our industry have increased their competitiveness day by day. Until August, when we were experiencing the currency shock, our textile machinery imports in 2018 increased by up to 80%. With the increase in the exchange rate over the last few months, this figure has been reduced to 50%. This year our imports increased by 70%, especially in weaving and spinning machines. The textile finishing machines, which we are the best, have reached up to 60% export in 2018 compared to the previous year.In addition, our exports are growing steadily. We are expecting an increase in exports by at least 20% in 2018.
What can you say about TEMSAD’s 2019 goals and expectations?
We will participate in the ITMA Fair, which will be held in Spain on 20-26 June 2019, with 156 Turkish companies. We will be in the fifth rank in terms of participant companies right after Italy, China, Germany and India (in total there are participants from 47 different countries). 110 of 156 participants are members of Temsad. We will represent our local textile machinery at ITMA in the best way and represent our country as we do in other organizations. In addition, the year 2019 will be the most intense participation in the Bangladesh market. With the DTG 2019 fair in January, our activity in the market will increase. We are planning to carry out a workshop with the participation of our members in Uzbekistan and Egypt, one of the important and rising markets of our sector. Our sector is growing more and more every year abroad and opening to new markets. We will make our local textile machinery more recognizable around the world by adding new ones to the cooperation agreements with the textile companies of 18 different countries and by making new studies in new countries.We aim to achieve a significant increase in imports by providing the same success of our producers, who have increased their market share abroad every year. For this purpose, we will continue to bring together the textile sector with our textile manufacturers in cooperation with the Fashion Ready-to-Wear Federation and this year with the Textile Finishing Industry Association. We make every effort to pave the way for domestic machinery use.