1) Could you tell us the story of the founding of the company? What kind of vision did you set out with? Where are you today? Could you give information about your company’s production capacity, product variety, number of employees and in which regions it operates?
Dofer Yapı, whose foundations were laid by our founder Mustafa Doğan, was established in Ankara in 1985. Our company focused on iron trade in the first years. In 2005, we started production in Ankara Başkent OIZ. We continued to increase our production area and production capacity with investments every year. In 2015, we started producing steel mesh as well as ready-made iron production. In 2017, we made a new investment decision in line with the sense of trust we have achieved in our sector, the importance we attach to institutionalization and quality management, and our increasing market share. We implemented our second factory in Karabük OSB. In 2018, we restructured ourselves to open up to global markets and started exporting. By 2021, the share of our production-based sales in turnover increased from 31% to 40%, and in 2022 it reached 52%. We continued to increase our exports simultaneously. We achieved an increase of 43% in 2021 compared to the previous year and 389% in 2022.
In line with all our investments, today we have become one of the important iron trading, steel mesh and ready-made iron production companies in our country. We continue production in a total factory area of 14,400 square meters, including 8,600 square meters closed and 5,800 square meters open, in Ankara Başkent OIZ, and in a total of 30,000 square meters of factory area, including 8,780 square meters closed and 21,220 square meters open, in Karabük OIZ. With our 7 production lines, we are among the important companies in our sector in terms of Turkey’s production capacity.
With our 144 employees who are experts in their fields, we continue to offer high quality products to our national and international customers in accordance with Turkish Standards. We provide cost advantage with our strong capital structure and production power, and logistic advantage with our commercial vehicle fleet and campuses. In addition to the products we deliver to all over Turkey, we export to countries around the world, mainly Georgia, Cyprus, Kyrgyzstan, Poland and England. Thus, we offer added value to our country’s economy, exports, employment and industry.
We started our renewable energy investments to meet the electricity needs of our production facilities, to become energy independent and to contribute to our sustainability goals. We will meet our energy needs in production from the renewable energy we produce with our solar power plants with a total installed power of 1.91 MW on the roofs of both of our factories.
2) How are you spending 2023? How was your turnover in the first half year? How do you aim to close the year?
As Dofer Yapı, we aim to increase our sales every year. Despite the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, we managed to increase our sales by 38% compared to the previous year. We increased our turnover by 47% in 2021 to 927 million TL. In 2022, with the decrease in the effects of the pandemic and the right prices and sales strategies, our international sales reached 389% and our total sales reached 51.2%. Thus, we completed the year with a turnover of 1.4 billion TL. In the first half of 2023, we achieved a turnover of 716 million TL, an increase of 30% compared to the same period of the previous year. We aim to complete the year successfully, in line with our goals, as in previous years.
3) Why did you choose to go public?
We work to provide added value to our country in every field with the strength and experience we derive from our deep-rooted past. We are very proud to add a new milestone to the history of our company in this important year when we celebrate the 100th anniversary of our Republic. We chose to go public in order to take the steps we took to become institutionalized one step further and to lay a solid foundation for future generations. We aim to continue our growth as a publicly traded, transparent company. Our greatest desire is to continue to expand our successful results with the strength we receive from our investors.
4) How do you plan to utilize the income your company will receive from its public offering? What are your priority investment areas?
As Dofer Yapı, we will use the majority of the income we will obtain from the public offering to strengthen our investment and working capital. In addition to increasing the capacities of our factories in Ankara Başkent OIZ and Karabük OIZ, we will supply the molds, machines and automation devices that will be needed for the new products to be produced. The two lines we plan to purchase have a steel mesh production capacity of 9,750 tons/year in a single shift. With this investment, our production capacity will increase by 10-12% in a single shift. In addition, we are also planning to invest in a new factory for our new investment plan: steel mesh line, additional machines and storage area.
5) What are your company’s future goals? What can you say about your growth strategy, new markets, new products or new collaborations?
Although the construction sector in our country has experienced a contraction in recent years, we can say that it has entered a growth trend. While the sector grew by 6.2 percent in the second quarter, it achieved 5.4 percent growth in the first half of the year. There will continue to be a need for housing, infrastructure projects such as tunnels and subways, and industrial buildings both in our country and in the world in the coming years. In particular, increasing investments in industrial facilities, investments in organized industrial zones, transformation and restructuring works resulting from disasters such as earthquakes and floods increase the need for our products in direct proportion. The steel mesh and ready-made iron that we produce are of great importance in terms of building safety. We are one of the leading companies in our country that produces in accordance with standards. In addition to Turkish Standards, we carry out production at international standards with our ISO 45001 OHS Management System, ISO 10002 Customer Satisfaction Management System, ISO 14001 Environmental Management System, ISO 9001 Quality Management System and EN 10080 certificates. We will continue to introduce our high quality products to the construction industry and contribute to building safety in the coming period, as we have done so far. As we continue to grow, we aim to strongly support our country’s economy, employment and exports with our investments.
Yağmur Doğan
Dofer Yapı Board Member