IMak Reduktor, which produces gears, hub reduction gears and variators for a variety of industries around the world, was founded in 1973 in Istanbul.
Salim Haffar, Deputy General Manager of I-MAK Reduktor, talked about the work of the company in an interview with Defensehere.com.
Stating that they want to use their 50 years of experience in machining to be more present in the defense industry, Haffar said:
"So I-MAK was founded 50 years ago in 1973 by four different founders. It's a Turkish owned company completely. And we still have the same founders and the same owners now running on the company. And we are now in the third generation of owners. We've been here in this factory for many years. And we want to continue this expansion in the future.
And we are still strong on our feet and confident for the future yet. So we are doing all of our production here in this site in Istanbul. We have a 14,000 square meter factory and we are now working on two major expansions. This year we are adding a foundry to our factory in the region of Düzce and we are now getting ready to move to a new 50,000 square meter plant. We will be hopefully moving there in two-three years.
It's located in Adapazarı and it will be a big progress, a big progress for us. For now, all the production is done in this factory. We are doing a lot of different operations, starting from the machining of the of the foundry parts and then production of the gears. And it's all made in-house and all the know how is in the same plant and factory.
So the factory now has more than 275 employees. Out of this number, we have 70 white collars and 20 of them are specialized engineers into gears. But in the same time, we also have a very wide network worldwide. And we recently opened branches in a lot of different countries. So we have our own I-MAK branches, mounting centers in Spain, the United States and South Africa.
So we also have employees working with us there as well. So I-MAK is a highly specialized in what we are doing. So I would say we are some kind of expert in the production of gearboxes. We've been doing now this for more than 50 years. So first we are owning all of our different designs. We are making all the different developments in-house based on the latest standards we are using European standard, but we are also the first Turkish company to be member of the AGMA, American Gear Manufacturing Association.
So with all these developments, we are now producing more than 1 million product range of producst. So it means that we are able to cover all the needs of the Turkish, but also the worldwide industry, starting from very small gearboxes to very big boxes, up to 90,000 Newton meters, which is a very big size of gearboxes.
So we do all the production here in-house, starting from cutting of the gears up to the grinding, but we also have our own research center, but also our own laboratory for measuring the gears, for the precision. And all this kind of subjects are developed already here inside our own factory. So we are very lucky to have a very rich and large park of machines.
And so we are doing everything in-house. So starting from the lathe up to the grinding, we are doing everything in-house. So just to give you an example, for a single gear, the production of the gears is going to up to 12 different operations. So it means that is going on 12 different machines. So the most important machine that we have here is a high precision grinding machines.
So it's very rare to find these in Turkey. So we invested in that is very important for us to invest in highly technological machines that we use for grinding of the years, but also for measuring the gears to make sure that we meet the high standards of the Turkish industry. And also in that particular case, to be sure that we meet the demand of the highly technological defense industry in Turkey, but also worldwide as well.
So we have a very wide range of products. We have, as I said, 1 million range of products divided in different series. So with this very wide range of gearboxes starting from worm gears to helical and bevel gears as well, but also planetary gearboxes, we are now serving a very wide range of industry. So we work with the petrochemical industry, with the food industry, obviously with the defense industry, the construction as well, the water treatment and the waste treatment.
Just to give you an example, just recently in Pendik we opened with the municipality, the biggest waste treatment center in Turkey, which is one of the highest technological center in Turkey, but also in the world. And we are using our fully automated solution in this in the center, but we also deal with a lot of different sectors. This could be pumps, this could be anything turning and working in industry.
So I can say that we are really here to give movement to the Turkish industry, but also to large industries all over the world. Actually, as we are now dealing with more than 54 countries, we had export last year in 54 countries. And these represent a large range of sectors, large range of portfolio. And that the most important for us is that we are working with a lot of different regions.
So we have project for example, in very big mines in South Africa, but we also deal with Amazon. In California, for example, we are working with highly technological companies in Switzerland. We also did a lot with companies in Asia. We have our multi center in in India, Chennai. So it means that we have this broad overview of the, the word industry and we say yes.
So we started a very new strategy in the last year. It's an expansion worldwide. So we want to keep our production here in Turkey. We are very proud to be a Turkish company and deal with this ecosystem, but we are opening a lot of mounting centers around the world. So it means that we send all the parts from Turkey and then we mount them in different countries.
It's important to know that we are now having what we call in Turkish, the “Yerli belgesi”. So it means that we are producing 98% of the parts we didn't turkey and then we export these worldwide. So the first target is to keep the production within Turkey. We want to continue to create value and take benefit of the rich eco system of the Turkish industry. This is the first target.
The second target is to enter and be more present in the defense industry within Turkey, which is a very dynamic sector, a highly technological sector. So we also want to play a role into this, this industry. So this is our second target. And well, the third target is to continue to represent as good as possible the Turkish industry all over the world."
