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Lineer Makina: “We are one of the three manufacturers of Horizontal Foam Cutting machine, LM-FS-300 in the world
by istmag
Gülfidan Yaşar, Sales and Marketing Manager at Lineer Makina stated that they were one of the only three manufacturers of Foam Splitter Machine, LM-FS-300 in the world.
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Having been asked about what would lie ahead, precautions taken by the companies during and post pandemic periods and other major issues such as new investment plans and branding processes, Ms Yaşar informed us of the fact that they were planning to participate in two game changing exhibitions; Interzum Cologne-2021 (Cologne, Germany) and Expo-Foam-2021 (Stuttgart, Germany).
First off, I’m kindly asking for your overview of present situation of mattress industry in Turkey with your future projections. The solid economic structure of our country still promises the continuation of dynamic and sustainable growth in the mattress market despite the notorious pandemic that came out of nowhere hitting global economies including ours, along with other undesirable incidents occurring in and around our territories.
Geographical location of Turkey to the Middle East, Europe, North Africa and Russia provides our country with commercial advantages. Speedy service, in particular, as is known to all, is vital; therefore, geographical proximity and quick delivery time are highly important. Compared to production in Europe, Turkey has much better conditions in terms of the ratio of youth population and labor costs with additional benefits such as technology used in production as well as production and labor-force efficiency against Russia, the Middle East and North Africa.
Our overview on mattress market in Turkey is that mattress production has not grown enough considering the present population, demand and income per capita and that it will keep growing. The use of ready-made mattresses took a comparative surge particularly around 90s, following hand-made wool mattresses made mostly at homes. Looking into the growth in demand to ready-made mattress-
es, one can easily account for possible reasons such as transformation of extended family to nuclear family, ever increasing income, thus living in bigger homes and soaring urban settlement. Building and operating a mattress facility was also a low cost investment. That production costs were also reasonable was another factor that boosted the ready-made mattress industry. It’s assumed that mattress industry has not grown enough basically because it’s overshadowed by the furniture industry. Mattresses are sold along with peripheral bedding furniture in our country while in Europe, mattress and furniture industries have gone their separate ways. Mattress manufacturers in Europe are quite professional in terms of production and advanced sales network.
What are your projections about Turkish mattress industry today and tomorrow globally, taking into account the present figures? Due to the pandemic and its consequence, a widespread recession by the beginning of 2020, our sector has suffered a lot and almost came to a halt, so to speak, just like industries of all sorts globally. However, an increasing demand followed such a tragic period fortunately before the industry fully shut down. Demand from abroad during and post pandemic period was and has also been another driving force to industrial recovery. Now the arrow on the chart is on a steady pace upwards. Turkish mattress industry, in short, goes full steam ahead to be one of the global major players, thanks to its geographically advantageous location and easy, raw material supply from domestic market.
Would you please inform us of Lineer Makina’s production line? Lineer Makina was founded in Kayseri in 2011 for the sole purpose of manufacturing machinery to mattress manufacturers. On top of the prerequisites did we put ‘customer satisfaction and top-notch technology’; then came sector-related demands from our clients, which led us to take part in associated fields such as furniture, foam, packaging and isolation; five sectors in total.
Our primary objective in the sectors that we are engaged in is providing our clientele with the cutting-edge technology machinery as well as sustainability on customer satisfaction by
maintaining satisfactory customer service.
Our innovative and dynamic R&D department strives hard to update the machinery, already on the inventory along with attempts to put new ones on our machinery range. Our recent addition to the list is LMFS-300, a Foam Splitter Machine, for which we have been working for over one year. We are now the third company in the world manufacturing the machine in question. Foam producers, in general, needed Foam Splitter Machinery for long but they avoided manufacturing it since it was a high cost investment, thus resulted in concerns on foam and similar investment projections. Lineer Makina’s state-ofthe-art Foam Splitter Machine, a product of more than a year’s day and night effort now makes the investment plans of foam producing companies possible, providing them with relatively low cost production.
Machinery industry, in general, is open to innovation. How are things at Lineer Makina in terms of applying innovation and innovative technologies? As you know, competition is getting harsher and harsher every day; producers, therefore, are committed to carry out their production through automation and machinery trying to minimize their workforce. In this respect, enhancing efficiency and industry 4.0 gain more and more significance. Lineer Makina is determined to apply its solid R&D perspective on all the steps of design, innovation and machinery manufacturing to provide its clientele with full satisfaction. How about new investments and branding projects at Lineer Makina? We are planning to focus more on marketing strategies and in the forthcoming period to transform our company into a globally recognized brand. Hopefully, with the termination of pandemic period, our participation in international exhibitions will escalate. So will our client visits.
Does the government provide machinery industry with particular subsidies? Any expectations you have of the government? There is no such subsidy, particularized for the machinery industry. Granted by the government, KOSGEB (Small and Medium Enterprises Development Organization of Turkey) subsidies are always available for all the sectors.
Covid-19 constituted a huge impediment for exhibitions; Have you been looking forward to them? What exhibitions are you planning to be a part of? Unfortunately, we have been going through hard times in 2020 due to the notorious pandemic with travel bans and cancellation of exhibitions. Exhibitions and travels sure are significant for all the players in business world. We believe things will get much better right after the suspension of bans and confinements. Lineer Makina is planning to participate in two grandiose exhibitions; Interzum Cologne-2021 (Cologne, Germa-
ny) and Expo-Foam-2021 (Stuttgart, Germany).
Where do you think Lineer Makina will be positioned in the future? Lineer Makina is committed to position itself in a place where it’s highly recommended worldwide as a globally recognized company that offers full customer satisfaction.
You are operating both in domestic and international markets. What countries are you most concentrated on? We were deeply focused on domestic market sales during the early stages of our foundation. International market share of the company has gradually increased to a certain degree that one can see our brand almost all corners of the world including Canada in the far west to several countries in Europe like Portugal and Germany and Azerbaijan, one of the major markets among Turkic Republics. Our goal is to increase the ties with potential markets and strengthen the connections already established.
What are your assumptions concerning the future of mattress industry? What measures do you assume that the industry needs to take for maintenance of the increasing momentum? Growth in the mattress industry will prove to be continuing in the forthcoming years. For the industry to fully meet the growing needs at the market, machinery manufacturing associated with all the sub-industries and manufacturing of mattress components should go hand in hand.
Interzum Guangzhou challenges coronavirus
The major event of the furniture manufacturing and woodworking machinery was successfully held with the participation of Chinese professionals.
Suspense and great anticipation accompanied the launch of the first Koelnmesse event since the coronavirus crisis began: interzum guangzhou in China (27 to 30 July 2020) demonstrated that trade fairs with strict hygiene rules in place and a limited number of admissions – in the food-service areas, for example – are possible in spite of the pandemic and can result in a good commercial outcome. ‘The international participation was good and in keeping with the circumstances; thanks to digital business matchmaking, exhibitors were also able to reach visitors who were unable to travel to the event’, according to Gerald Böse, President and Chief Executive Officer of Koelnmesse. ‘This corroborates our efforts to begin hosting trade fairs again in our halls in Cologne as soon as possible. The success of interzum guangzhou encourages us to set the course for this outcome, together with our customers.’
interzum guangzhou marked the first major platform for the international furniture manufacturing and supply sector in the second half of the year. More than 800 exhibitors from 16 countries and almost 100,000 visitors took the opportunity to meet vendors, customers and business partners again in person, building and strengthening
relationships and reconnecting as an industry. ‘In the current situation, the most important thing is for our customers to feel comfortable and safe at our events’, Keith Tsui, Managing Director of the Chinese Koelnmesse subsidiary, explained. ‘As event professionals, we see ourselves in a position to create conditions that are conducive to trade fairs, even in times such as these.’
As expected, there were fewer exhibitors than seen in the statistical results of the previous interzum guangzhou, but there were international exhibitors who made use of the event as well. Among other things, there was an official German group entry comprised of a total of eight German exhibitors; their appearance was successfully supervised by local employees or sales partners on location. Among visitors, the trade fair was focused primarily on the Chinese market. From the first day of the trade fair, it recorded excellent and only slightly lower numbers of national visitors when compared to the previous event. On the third day of the event, a record number
of visitors was even achieved compared to previous events: “This shows that our visitors feel safe and enjoy spending several days and more time at our show,” says Tsui. This makes the event a role model for returning to normalcy following months of uncertainty – and a successful digital extension of the event’s reach: For international customers who were unable to travel to the venue due to travel restrictions, interzum guangzhou offered ‘Offline2Online Live Business Matching’. International visitors joined in the proceedings digitally from home, virtually meeting with the exhibitors on hand to cultivate business relationships and present new products. Exhibitors’ feedback on these virtual meetings and on the event as a whole was consistently very positive: Dr. Rajat Agarwal, Henkel (China)
Investment Co., Ltd., Corporate Vice President
“So, I am quite impressed with the quantity of exhibitors and people. We also see that the exhibition overall is extremely well organized and very clean. So, I’m very happy to see a well-organized exhibition.”
Mr. Simon Jenkinson, LINAK (Shenzhen) Actuator Systems Ltd., President “My personal opinion is that the show is busier than I was actually expecting it to be. There are more people here than I thought there would be, and we are meeting many of our old friends
as well from within the industry, that we haven’t seen for a long time. This has been the first opportunity to catch up with existing customers and contacts.” The kick-off in China will be followed by further outbound Koelnmesse events in the food sector: THAIFEX – Anuga Asia in Bangkok in September, and yummex Middle East in Dubai in November. The trade fair team in Cologne is looking forward to a re-start there, with ART COLOGNE and COLOGNE FINE ART & DESIGN (18 to 22 November 2020). ‘For all of our events – whether in Cologne, with our B-SAFE4business concept, or abroad in coordination with our subsidiaries – we have developed detailed hygiene concepts that enable our customers to conduct business with one another directly’, Böse assured. ‘Trade fairs have an absolute systemic relevance for the global economic fabric, and for many participants they are actually of existential importance. 90 percent of the exhibitors in the Koelnmesse programme are small or medium-sized enterprises for which international trade fairs represent the main gateway to the global market. Our mission, as an international trade fair organiser, is to give the industries involved the propulsive power they need for their business. And we take this mission very seriously.’
The negative effects of the Covid-19 epidemic, which affects all life globally, as in our country, continue. With the measures taken to ensure that its customers and employees overcome the process with minimum damage, delivering the pandemic process into an advantage is presented by Sunan Malzemecilik.
The Covid’19 epidemic, which swept the world, deeply affected our country as it did every other country. The destructive effects of Covid-19, which enable us to encounter a new world order, are countless measures and struggles. The economic dimensions of this difficult process, which was spent with masks, gloves, social distance and efforts to fit life into the home, were also very heavy. With the Covid-19 epidemic, which obliged revision in economic activities as well as in social life, the companies made some changes in their service understanding.
“Companies with innovative thinking skills turned the pandemic into an advantage” Sunan Malzemecilik Foreign Trade Manager Büşra Sunman said about the pandemic process and the measures taken by her companies during this process: “Radical cyclical changes negatively affect companies that lack flexibility, as well as provide advantages to companies with strategic plans, innovative thinking and adapting to changing conditions. In our sector, the sales character and rhythm of our company
Büşra Sunman Foreign Trade Manager of Sunan Malzemecilik
has changed due to the prolongation of deadlines due to the slowdown in production and the contraction in domestic and foreign demand. Since electronic commerce showed a significant increase in this period, the sales of products with low shipping costs increased both at home and abroad.” Promoted R&D products with ‘Mobile Fair Vehicle’ Delivering pioneers in the industry, Sunan Malzemecilik did not allow its quality service to be interrupted by further strengthening its online sales infrastructure during this period. Sunan Malzemecilik realized ‘Mobile Fair Vehicle’ project because of cancelled exhibitions at the pandemic period and company serves their R&D products for
customers’ attention in Turkey.
Şenol Öksüm, Production and Sales Manager of Pakfiks, briefs the success of the company during the pandemic. The key points are being flexible and adapt the new rules of the game such as launching written calls and teleconferences as alternatives to onsite visits. Öksüm detailed their success story as follows:
The pandemic coronavirus not only caused a large number of deaths globally, but also threatened public health, disrupting the supply-demand balance, bringing trade activities to a halt. Also, significant contractions were experienced in international trade.
The quarantine measures implemented by the countries within the scope of the epidemic started to affect the foreign trade of our country as in many countries due to reasons such as the cessation of production in factories and the increase in border controls where goods are transported. If we check the main reasons for the decrease in our exports, we can state that the restrictive measures implemented due to COVID-19 and the narrowing in demand due to the virus, has an important effect in the countries we trade.
Another factor affecting our exports is that China, from which we import raw materials, has
Covid-19 effects very severely. However, the first measure taken in customs procedures was to ensure the entry of goods into the country after a disinfection process in imports from China. This causes a waiting (warehouse) cost on products imported from China. In addition, the cancellation and suspension of most of the fair organizations and the insufficient demand, and the interruption of our foreign customer visits are among other negative effects.
With the start of the pandemic process in terms of exports, we can say that a great decline was experienced, even stopped, especially in April, and that this process gradually gained momentum as of May. Although we cannot make our international connections with on-site visits, we continue this process by providing written calls and teleconferences. We do our best to keep our contact with our business partners as active as possible. We hope that; as all sectors, we will overcome this challenging process with the least damage in terms of the global economy.
Despite the negativities, our exports continue to increase day by day.
