Please elaborate on the establishment of Kubilay Boya. What is the organisational structure of Kubilay Boya in India and on the international market today?
The foundations of our company were laid in 1984 when our current Chairman of the Board, Hasan Bilgic, started selling wood coatings in a small retail store in Ankara with strong encouragement from his father, Mehmet Bilgic. As a customer-oriented wood coatings retail store with high quality service, Kubilay Boya has achieved continuous growth and became a rising power in the wood coatings market in Ankara in the 1990s. In 2001, Kubilay Boya partnered with a coating manufacturer and started production in Izmir. In 5 years of successful partnership, together they became one of the major manufacturers in the Turkish wood coatings market. Thereafter, a decision to build a new facility was made due to insufficient capacity. However, this decision ended the partnership between the two companies.
In 2005, Kubilay Boya started production in its own facility in Aliaga Organized Industrial Zone and KUBILAY branded products entered the market. Since making their debut, Kubilay products have been admired by the market, and this has made them the leading wood coatings in Turkey. Today, Kubilay Boya has been the leading wood coatings company in the Turkish market for the last six consecutive years and exports to more than 30 countries worldwide.
You have a product variety for the Indian market. It was designed with the Indian market in mind. How does it contribute to product development and consistency?
Here at Kubilay Boya, we consider all the needs of our customers. We always take our customers’ recommendations into account. This makes our product variety greater than any other brand in the market. Therefore, most of the time, we can come up with recommendations from our product portfolio. If this is not the case, our expert R&D team works on new product development each and every day. We carefully design new formulations, first on a laboratory scale and later on a large scale.
Apart from India, what other regions do you currently serve? What is the demand for these products in these countries?
We serve more than 30 countries around the world. The regions include Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. In every country that we are present, we aim to be one of the top 3 wood coatings companies in the market. This, of course, can take quite a long time, especially for big countries like India. However, our ultimate goal is the top spot.
A wide range of innovative materials are available in the coating industry. How do you see competition in the field of innovation?
Innovation is central to the business world, and today it is happening faster and more dramatically than ever before. Every industry is experiencing change and disruption, which makes for some exciting – though challenging – times for businesses. Especially in the coatings industry, innovative products such as biocoatings, which is the application of green chemistry to coating technology, as well as “smart” functional coatings have been researched over recent years. In order to meet the criteria defined in the Paris Agreement, the amount of volatile organic compounds is being reduced in coating formulations. This first started with replacing solvent-based coatings with high solid formulations, and later water-based technology made progress. As we can see from the data below, water-based 2K polyurethanes are now competitive with solvent-based 2K polyurethanes. Another important research area is functional coatings. Today, there are many products with proper functions such as self-healing, self-cleaning, antimicrobial, and flame retardant coatings. Thanks to our R&D specialists, we launched many new innovative products that are state-of-the-art.
Can you give us an overview of your various product portfolios? Which products have been and are still particularly successful for Kubilay Boya?
We offer a broad range of product portfolios to the industrial wood coatings market. Based on resins, our products can be divided into polyurethane, acrylic, polyester, and nitrocellulose. Our 2K polyurethane systems (primer+topcoat) are highly preferred by manufacturers in every market where we are present. Some other customers who are looking for the highest quality prefer our acrylic systems. We also manufacture environmentally-friendly products such as low VOC UV coatings and zero VOC water-based coatings. Even for DIYers, we have water-based wood coatings. With such a wide range of products in our portfolio, we have a solution for every furniture manufacturer. Even in the 2K polyurethane primer segment, we have 7 different primers and respond to our customers’ needs.
What are the industries/segments in which you work? Where do you believe the biggest demand exists?
As Kubilay Boya, about 90–95% of our total production consists of wood coatings. Since the family comes from the wood coatings sales tradition, wood coatings are always our top priority as a company, which will always be the case. In addition to wood coatings, we are the first and only manufacturer of mirror-backing paints in Turkey. We have made a considerable R&D investment in mirror-backing paints and we are continuously working towards being a top manufacturer in Europe. Furthermore, we also manufacture industrial coatings for metal surfaces.
What is the current global trend in the coating industry? How is the market shaping up in India?
The Russia-Ukraine War and COVID-19 have had a huge impact on the global wood coatings industry. Raw material shortages and logistical challenges have limited the availability of many products in the market. Thanks to the planning of our team, we have not faced such an availability problem yet. However, the fate of the Russia-Ukraine War and the global energy crisis will be the determining factors of the sector’s way for the upcoming time period. On the other hand, efforts to meet sustainability criteria and investments in functional coatings are going on. Here at Kubilay Boya, we keep up with the global trends in the industry and adjust quickly to changes in the dynamics of the market. The Indian wood coatings market consists of top companies from the world, especially with local partnerships. Nevertheless, we see there is a hunger for new brands like us that can offer high quality wood coatings to the market. The Turkish wood coatings industry is the third largest in Europe, after Italy and Germany, and it occupies a unique geographical and market position. The wood coating industry of a country is as strong as that country’s furniture industry. Therefore, Turkish wood coatings, thanks to the strong furniture sector, are a unique opportunity waiting to be explored.
How does Kubilay Boya Products perform in terms of sustainability and environmental friendliness?
Our environmental awareness and sensitivity are extremely high. The company’s environmental policy is shared with the public on our website. As a company, we conduct production with the principle that we will not harm the ecological balance with all our activities and that we will prevent environmental pollution that may occur during our activities.
We make process and process improvements in order to minimise the use of natural resources. By minimising our waste at the source, we ensure that it is reused and recycled as much as possible, and that non-recyclable waste is disposed of by licenced companies. We carry out the execution of Occupational Health and Safety processes with the participation of employees and employee representatives.
As a company that manufactures in a high-risk industry, we take a proactive approach to occupational health and safety. In addition to working with our independent Occupational Safety Specialist, we employ a full-time Occupational Safety Specialist (Class A) within our organization. We conduct our occupational health and safety studies with regular inspections and monthly Occupational Health and Safety Board Meetings.
What kind of work are you doing as a Kubilay Boya company in the fields of innovation and R&D?
We strongly believe that R&D is the heart of businesses like ours and it is impossible to achieve sustainable growth without attaching importance to R&D studies and investment. As Kubilay Boya, our staff is one of the subjects in which we have invested the most. We have one of the most distinguished technical staffs in Turkey. Kubilay Boya is a company that constantly renews itself. To invest in R&D activities in the long term in order to maintain its “new product design” strategy has been aimed.
In this context, by employing a full team of experts in their respective fields, we successfully carried out R&D projects including, but not limited to TDI prepolymer synthesis, environment-friendly low lead mirror-backing paint, zero-lead mirror backing paint, epoxy acrylate oligomer synthesis, and antiviral wood coating in the framework of TUBTAK and university-industry collaboration.
We also collaborate with distinguished professors in the coatings field, including Prof. Dr. Yusuf Yagci from Istanbul Technical University and Prof. Dr. Gungor Gunduz from METU. Our main goal is to make maximum use of the valuable academic experience of our professors in our R&D studies.