“One of our goals for the near future is to invest in renewable energy sources. Sustainability and renewable energy concepts have become more and more important in our day when we are in danger of depletion of natural resources. Recently, the significance of access to energy has been experienced by all sectors. We aim to complete our energy investment as soon as possible in order to guarantee the uninterrupted continuity of production and to become a self-sufficient facility.”

Efe Toru
Business Development Specialist
Toru Un

We held an interview with Efe Toru, one of the fourth-generation young managers of Toru Un, which has been serving the bakery sector with a variety of bakery products, with an effort to bring its quality and service understanding to the next level. In this interview, you will be able to find the opportunity to learn more about the brand and its services, as well as the developments in the sector. Efe Toru, who is promising with his knowledge and goals for the sector at his young age, says that he believes that their products and work are sacred. He states that they are trying to make all the necessary investments at every stage including raw material procurement, laboratory, production, storage, packaging, and service, in their journey to transform the company into a food facility that makes production at world standards. The answers given to our questions by Toru Un’s fourth-generation manager and the brand’s Business Development Specialist Efe Toru are as follows:

Dear Mr. Toru, first of all, thank you very much for accepting our interview request. You are one of the young generation managers of Toru Un, one of the leading wheat flour producers in Türkiye. How would you introduce yourself and your half-century-old company?

I would like to thank you for your interview invitation. First of all, I would like to start by saying Happy New Year to all your readers. I hope 2023 will be a healthy, happy, and successful year for everyone.

I’m Efe Toru. I am one of the 4th generation family members of our company. I was born in 1992 in Bursa. My education started at Bursa-Karacabey Cumhuriyet Primary School and continued with Istanbul VKV Koç Private High School. I completed my undergraduate education at Koç University, Faculty of Economics. Then, I studied International Business Law and Project Management at UC Irvine in California, USA. I got an offer after an internship experience in the USA, but I chose to work with our family members who have contributed to me both educationally and socially for years and to respond to these efforts with my effort.

The foundations of our company were laid in the 1970s with the partnership of my great grandfather, Bayezid Toru, with Has Çeltik A.Ş, located in Bandırma, Balıkesir. After the adaptation of our family, which is of agricultural origin, to the industry, my grandfather and his sons got involved in the business, and they became Bandırma Has Un Fabrikası Ltd. in 1988. They established their company. As our industry, which has a very rooted tradition, develops and its bond with technology gets stronger day by day, investments have never finished.

Our company continues to work with many domestic and foreign business partners that produce bakery products, most of which are industrial food businesses. Our vision is to maintain the position of the preferred brand by keeping the quality and food safety at the highest level for human health and to meet the flour needs of more customers in the domestic and international markets in the next 10 years.

Our mission is to deliver the requested quality and safe products to our customers with sustainable competitive prices and perfect service and to see customer satisfaction as an indispensable value.

You make production in an area that is very important for human health and that constitutes the source of most of the energy our body receives. What is the importance of R&D studies and laboratories for you, the flour producers?

We believe that we make production and work in a sacred area. We do and will strive to make all the necessary investments in the journey of becoming a world-class food facility ranging from raw material procurement to laboratory, production, storage, packaging, and service. In order to carry out successful R&D and laboratory work, first of all, your analysis device and knowledge infrastructure must be complete. Only if these conditions are met, can you get value-added results. Our company has positioned product and service quality at the center of our brand values. In fact, in order to reflect this point of view, our laboratory was designed as a display window in the middle of our office building. I think it is a good symbol of our perspective on quality, R&D, and transparency. With this motivation, I can say that our R&D studies and laboratory are indispensable. The basis of long-term business partnerships is to maintain the demanded quality as a standard.

I HOPE EVERYONE LEARNED FROM THE CORONAVIRUS PROCESS

You follow both Türkiye and the world markets closely. The coronavirus pandemic, which has captured the world for a long time, has led to multifaceted fractures in economies. How did this process affect you, the flour industrialists? What innovations or standards has it brought to the milling industry?

The negative effects of the coronavirus pandemic on the economy, especially on supply chains, appear as the priority agenda of almost every session. I prefer not to talk about parts that I’m sure everyone already knows. The coronavirus era reminded everyone of the importance of fundamental values in life, economy, health, production, and consumption. It reminded us that there is nothing indispensable except health, that life continues in some way if basic needs are met, that everyone is basically the same, that worries and fears are common to all humanity, and that the routines deepened by years can be broken in one day. It reminded us how important the own resources of countries, families, and individuals are in such times when everyone is preoccupied with their own troubles. Of course, what is important is to learn a lesson from every experience and to overcome similar situations better than the previous one. I hope all decision-makers have interpreted the events during the coronavirus process with the right queries and gained the necessary experience. The closure of public living spaces, such as schools, workplaces, sports, arts, cultural activities, etc., reduction of movement, travel, and waste, and tending towards household consumption have changed the dynamics of the market. Although panic purchases increased the demand in the sector due to uncertainty at the beginning, the market stabilized afterwards. The lockdowns due to the coronavirus and the inability to go to work paved the way for companies that have completed their investments in automation and technology to make a difference. In this period, thanks to our technological infrastructure, being able to continue production without personnel at key points provided us with uninterrupted supply.

IT IS IMPORTANT TO BE SELF-SUPPLIED IN STRATEGIC PRODUCTS LIKE WHEAT

There are concerns about a global food crisis due to climate change, drought, pandemic, and finally the war between Russia and Ukraine, two giant grain producers. What kind of future do you expect for 2023 and beyond?

We experience the effects of global warming, seasonal shifts, climate changes, and drought in our daily lives. Almost every day, we heard the examples given by previous generations saying “in our day”. Apart from this threat, the fact that two countries, which can be described as the breadbaskets of the world, are at war, increases the uncertainties and naturally the risks of a food crisis. I think that there will be no problem in terms of basic food availability in 2023 and in the near future. If we consider wheat globally, the yield was above the level that can be deemed sufficient in the last harvest, but the biggest risk is on the pricing side. In today’s world where communication is very fast, the monopolization of basic food raw material production and its use as a strategic power can change the market balances every day. The importance of being self-sufficient in strategic agricultural products such as wheat, which forms the basis of food, has come to the fore. Regionalization is increasing as logistics becomes a very important item in terms of cost. Long story short, I do not think that there will be a problem in food supply for 2023 and the near future, but the approaches of the producer countries and the logistical effects always carry a risk of crisis in terms of price.

YOUNG GENERATION MAKES WORK MORE ENJOYABLE

You are in an industry with long-standing and well-established companies. We started to see young new generation managers like you in many companies serving this sector in our country. How does this young generation see the future of the industry?

Our industry mostly consists of family companies. Communicating with friends of our generation, with whom we can speak the same language, makes work more enjoyable. It is a fact for everyone, regardless of generation, that we are doing staple food business and that it will always continue to exist. I hope that with the new generations joining the team, the awareness of producing human food and such an approach to production will be adopted even more. We are also aware of the importance, for the future of the sector, of becoming a country that is self-sufficient in agricultural production and that even supplies its products to the world by giving surplus. As the younger generations, the different aspects of our perspective on the sector compared to previous generations are primarily the creation of process standards, the journey of institutionalization, technology integration, working order, and cultural transformation. As a result of the internet and communication age, it is very easy to access information. One of the most important goals is to operate error-free and person-independent processes in our highly competitive industry, with the institutional memory created by bringing together the acquired knowledge and experience, and fast and accurate decision-making mechanisms based on data. We are aware that we cannot analyze what we do not measure, and we cannot manage what we cannot analyze.

Can you give us information about your production capacity? Also, how are your domestic and international sales figures? How much of the production do you export?

We have a total wheat processing capacity of 1000 tons/day with two independent lines on our campus in Bandırma, Balıkesir. Our total raw material storage area is 100,000 tons, including 80,000 tons of steel, 10,000 tons of concrete silos, and 10,000 tons of horizontal warehouses. In addition, we can stock 7,600 tons of flour as semi-finished products. The wide storage areas ensure that wheat and flour varieties can be separated and stored in specific qualities, and this ensures that the quality standards and sensitivities in the products to be produced specifically for the customer are at the highest level. We supply the majority of our production to our local business partners in our country. As a location, we are in the center of our country’s consumption population; It paves the way for us to reach our big cities such as Istanbul, Ankara, Bursa, and Izmir. In addition, some of our sales figures come from our business partners in the Middle East, Africa, and the Far East. Our goal is to increase our domestic and international figures and the employment we provide in the near future.

FLOUR REGULATION ENDED THE COMPETITION

What is your company’s perspective on the flour regulation implemented by TMO? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this for the industry?

As a result of the flour regulation implemented by TMO, bread producers are currently purchasing flour at regulated prices as per the legislation. In addition to its standard production, our company continues its production within the scope of regulation with the motivation of finding its place in this significant support provided by the state resources, and offers its products to the market so that the support from the public can reach the public and the end consumer again. Although the regulation of flour prices is not the only solution to control the price of bread within the scope of food inflation, the regulation has been successful in reducing the price of flour. Its advantage for the sector is that it is easier to access raw materials, and its disadvantage is that free-market competition cannot be achieved and companies cannot differentiate from each other.

RESPECT FOR PEOPLE, ANIMALS, NATURE…

We know how sensitive your company is to the environment. What are you doing against global warming and towards a more sustainable world? Is it an environmental concern or a marketing strategy that more than 80% of your products are delivered unpackaged?

Our company’s core values include respect for people, animals, and nature in short. The main source of all actions taken is based here. The fact that we ship more than 80% of our products unpackaged and in bulk with our 12 bulk trailers in our fleet provides benefits for nature and the creatures that consume our products in terms of food safety. It motivates us to talk about everything that provides goodness and benefit, rather than marketing and setting an example. We are happy when we are inspired by companies that provide similar benefits. I wish all of our business partners had a suitable infrastructure and we could deliver 100% of our products unpackaged. Moreover, we are shaping our renewable energy project for global warming and a more sustainable world, and we aim to become a company that can meet its own energy needs as soon as possible.

What are Toru Un’s priorities and works on food safety?

As Toru Un, our priority in food safety is to always provide the “safe food” guarantee which is identified with our brand. In order to ensure our quality and food safety standards, which are also proven by ISO Food Safety Certificates, we continue our audits and constantly invest in infrastructure development. We review and update the regulatory and preventive activities, and in this way, we have created a corporate culture. We are well aware that food safety cannot be ensured only by measures on our campus. We carefully select the raw material from the moment we start to supply, from the storage until it reaches our facility, to the vehicles that deliver it, and we apply certain procedures. The fact that the vehicles we ship our products belong to the company and that they undergo hygiene inspection after each shipment provides an end-to-end inspection opportunity. As a company, we provide periodic training for the flawless work of our teammates. We make measurements at every step, from raw material input to final product after-sales support. Measurements are recorded and analyzed by our relevant teams and we accordingly determine action plans.

WE MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN PRODUCT QUALITY THANKS TO OUR TECHNOLOGY

Milling machinery technology is constantly developing in the country and abroad. Turkish milling machine manufacturers are also competing with the world. What is the contribution of this to your industry? Could you tell us about your technical infrastructure and machine technology that you use in production?

First of all, many professionals from home and abroad have visited our field for inspection, and they continue to do so. The inspectors and visitors describe it as a rare facility by world standards. The production efficiency analysis, effective electricity consumption, and standard product quality of our facility, which is fully equipped with Turkish-made, domestic milling machines, prove where we stand in the competition with the world. The benefit of this for our industry is that we can make a difference in standard product quality against global competitors. I can say that after-sales support, maintenance and repair processes, and the supply of spare parts are very fast and we can get support when necessary and adapt to changes in an agile way with our knowledge. Our domestic automation system, which we use in production, forms the basis of our digitalization efforts in our production module. Thanks to the integration with our enterprise resource planning system, the fact that we can receive production data instantly and accurately enables us to use the data in our decision mechanism. This means that the processes from the product index to the business plan, from maintenance to packaging and shipping can work in an integrated and flawless manner. Here, our goal was to provide material and data flow simultaneously. Our domestic milling machinery infrastructure and automation system have been our biggest advantage in this regard.

The managers of the Turkish Grain Board express that the flour mills started to complain about the quality of the wheat they buy domestically. Can you describe your procedure for raw materials?

The journey of food safety and standard quality end product starts with raw materials. We supply domestic and imported raw materials in every category where we can provide the requested quality. We determine our stocking, production, and sales policies according to the raw material available in the domestic and international markets. It is always a natural result that quality is a question mark in highly productive years like this one because efficiency and quality work inversely. In order to meet the expectations of our business partners, we can supply high-quality wheat by paying a price difference. On the raw material side, the processes comply with our expectations.

SUSTAINABLE AND RENEWABLE ENERGY…

Can you share your future investment plans with us?

One of our goals for the near future is to invest in renewable energy sources. Sustainability and renewable energy concepts have become more and more important in our day when we are in danger of depletion of natural resources. When used efficiently with the right systems, renewable energy investments that offer environmentally friendly, low-cost, and sustainable energy are indispensable for protecting both our world and living life, minimizing carbon emissions, and reducing foreign dependency on energy production and air pollution. Recently, the significance of access to energy has been experienced by all sectors. We aim to complete our energy investment as soon as possible in order to guarantee the uninterrupted continuity of production and to become a self-sufficient facility.

Human resources are at the forefront of our investment plans. Although the investments made so far in production, technology, storage, logistics, and living areas have brought our physical standards to a certain point, we are aware that the greatest value is our teammates. With a correct and highly competent team, creative ideas and therefore development gain speed. Knowing that there is no end to development, we will continue to invest, but human resources will remain to be our priority.

Thank you very much for taking the time to answer our questions so sincerely.

Thanks a lot to everyone who contributed to this enjoyable interview. I hope it was beneficial for your readers as well.