ISTANBUL — Siegwerk, provider of printing inks for packaging applications and labels, has completed an investment project at its site in Tuzla, Turkey, one of the company’s 16 Centers of Excellence worldwide. Siegwerk Turkey improved both efficiency and safety at its regional headquarters and increased its production and storage capacities, which will enable the company to further grow and strengthen its market position in the region. Next to producing solvent-based inks and varnishes, the site in Tuzla also distributes the company’s Sheetfed and Narrow Web products to customers in Turkey, the Middle East, the Caucasus, Central Asia and Egypt, and serves Siegwerk’s entities in Nigeria and South Africa.

The project focused on safety requirements and storage expansion involving several architectural, mechanical, electrical and fire safety work streams. “After a series of detailed engineering studies, we have started with the reconstruction of our facility in 2017. Since mid of 2020, we are now officially allowed to fully operate in our modernized building,” explained Mustafa Güler, Vice President EMEA, Business Unit Sheetfed and Managing Director, Turkey and Middle East at Siegwerk. The redesign activities at the site in Tuzla not only increased the per-hour output by 20% to a total production capacity of 20,000 tons but also created 20 additional jobs, bringing the total number of employees to 130. “With the completion of the project, we have now upgraded the site in accordance with all recent legal requirements for fire and work safety and have increased our warehouse capacity in order to pave the way for future growth,” added Güler. “We have even mastered the challenge to build a state-of-the-art facility that meets the highest safety standards without stopping operations for just one single day. This is a huge milestone for our team.”

The project not only included investments in the redesign of existing buildings, like laboratory, production and warehouse, but also in new technologies to bring work safety to the next level. For example, the ventilation system in the production area has been reworked to better meet the needs of solvent emission, full automatic filling and weighing lines have been established, grinders and mixers have been renewed, and areas have been better equipped against natural events like earthquakes or thunderstorms. The warehouse has been redesigned from a three-floor to a one-story building with a nine-level rack system, doubling the storage capacity of pallets. Besides, solvent tanks have not only been renewed for an increase of storage capacity by 150% but also have been better connected to the production area, further increasing work efficiency and safety. These are a few examples of the improvements at Siegwerk’s site in Tuzla.

Additionally, Siegwerk Turkey also entered a rental agreement for a new plant at a neighboring property that is currently under construction, adding another 4,000 square meters of building and enabling the company to double the size of its site. Going forward, Siegwerk Turkey plans to further invest in digitalization of production and a simpler connection of production equipment and internal IT systems like SAP.