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minister’s recommendation as my successor at the director general position, didn’t realize the project of establishment the cement factory in Ergani either. Following my resignation, I was appointed as the technical inspector general in Sümerbank. After a short while after I started my new assignment, the director general of Sümerbank at that time invited me to his office and asked me to establish a branch under the name of directorate of chemistry projects and carry out the establishment of soda factory, chrom magnesite brick factory, caprolactan factory and amendment and expanding of Gemlik artifical silk factory and Filyos fire brick factory as well. The operations for establishing the soda and chrom magnesite factories were accelerated and feasibility reports were prepared and the locations where the factories are to be established were determined. The establishment of the caprolactan factory was postponed due to the reason that the necessary conditions weren’t ready. The British people who were anxious to hear that a soda factory was going to be established in Turkey, had applied to the upper level administration for this project to be abandoned and tried various ways to pressurize over us, fearing that they would lose a customer. İş Bank was the owner of the bottle-glass factory that consumed soda more that any other factory in Turkey. The director general of the bottle-glass factory Dr. Şahap KOCATOPÇU had supported this pressure. The mentioned people adviced that instead of establishing a soda factory, soda could be produced by natural vaporization of the water of Arın lake nearby Lake Van, as it was done in Çamaltı and Yavşan saltpans by influencing the State Planning Organization, and the young and unexperienced staff of State Planning Organization had handed over this advice to us. Stating the low soda concentration in Arın lake and the low count of hot and sunny days because elevation of the district is 1700 meters higher to sea level, had made the soda production by natural vaporizaiton impossible, the state planning organization was persuaded about the matter. However, İş Bank who supplied the soda needed in the bottle-glass factory by importing, carried on doing everything to be done in order to abandone this project. In the meantime, Samet KUZUCU who was the member of parliament from Konya and the founding partner of Konya Cement Industries Inc. visited me together with Alaattin TİRİTOĞLU, the assistant director general of İş Bank and CEO of Konya Cement Industries Inc. in order to invite me for the position of directorate general in Konya Cement Industries Inc. as a successor for the previous director general who was dismissed recently, even if I repeatedly told them that I wasn’t thinking of leaving my job which provided me with the best opportunities to carry out my profession, they insisted on their offer. Just to be rejected by them, I had to show the lack of foresight of asking for 15.000 TL monthly salary which was a huge mount at those times whether they could provide or not. I faced with a fait accompli because they accepted my demand. As a result, unintentionally, I had to resign from my job as the director of chemistry in Sümerbank and I started as the director general and member of board of directors in Konya Cement Industries Inc. in the second half of 1965. When I was the director general of Turkey Cement Industries Inc., on the requests of the partners of Konya Cement Industries Inc., I had made Turkey Cement Industries Inc. a partner to this corperation by 30 percent during the capital increase. As a result, one membership duty was granted to Turkey Cement Industries Inc. on the board of directors at Konya Cement Industries Inc. and Mr. Cavit BORÇBAKAN who was my successor as the director general at Turkey Cement Industries Inc. should have felt such a disturbance from my matchlessly high salary as the director general to Konya Cement Industries Inc., kept raising difficulties in the adminisrative council meetings through the member representing his corperation in the board of directors. But these efforts were useless because I had solid and firm supports from the other partners. While I was carrying out the operations of amendment and expanding of Konya Cement factory, a person that I wasn’t familiar with, asked me on the phone the time I was going to be at Ankara. As I told this person that my house was in Ankara and only at the weekends I was travelling to Ankara, Ahmet ESKİYAPAN, who was one of the owners of Nuh’un Ankara Makarnası (Nuh’s Ankara Macaroni) and Muharrem ESKİYAPAN, son of deceased Nuh ESKİYAPAN, came to visit me in Konya driving a luxurious car in three hours time. They told that they were the persons calling me from Ankara on the phone. At the end of talks, they informed me that they are having intentions to establish a cement factory and as a result of some recommendations the had come to me to offer me the position of director general to the cement factory they were going to establish. I informed them that some preliminary work had to be done in order to establish the cement factory, and until it is time to order for the facilities of factory I was going to assist them without any demands for any wages. Saturday afternoons, I was going to Ankara and visiting the macaroni factory. In the meantime I found out that they intend to establish the factory in İstanbul. In order to establish a cement factory, first of all, a location had to be selected and in accordance to the location of the company, the production capacity of the factory had to be determined. We were flying to İstanbul on the weekends to identify the location of the factory. We repeatedly strolled from Ambarlı to Adapazarı, with a vehicle that was reserved for our use from the İstanbul office of the macaroni factory to determine the most convinient location for establishing the factory. Finally we determined the location of the factory at Hereke as the first plan, where the factory is still located today. Although there were not enough level ground to construct the factory, it was decided that there had been huge amounts of marl, the raw material used in the production of cement in the area and the delivery of the products to customers using land transportation, railroad transportation and sea lanes is easily possible at this location. To form a level ground at this location to start the construction of the factory, there had to be 2 or 3 million cubic meters of excavation needed. However, there was no convinient location around to empty the soil excavated from here. With the help of the mayor, Ahmet ESKİYAPAN had preferred to empty the soil excavated to the sea at a selected suitable spot where is a port side today. The tunnel at the filling area where is the side port today and the pieces of lands were purchased from their owners that were in the 100 square meters area. At that time, in order to fill the sea with soil, it was necessary to pay 25 TL for each square meter. The necessary permissions from the authorities were taken and the payment was done to Gebze Revenue Department for 6.000 square meter area. During the excavation, the extracted soil was emptied to this area but the extracted material from excavation turned out to be twice of our forecasts. Ahmet ESKİYAPAN had bought the land registry of 12.000 square meters of land instead of 6.000 square meters. As a result, because the half of the permitted sea part filled with the land soil belongs to the state, every year a certain amount of money is being paid. While the excavation for the cement factory was going on, the director general of Turkey Cement Factory kept on insisting during his visits to İstanbul, that the wrong location is selected for the cement factory and I was the wrong man for them and added that wherever the turning point from loss, is always profitable, and finally asked “what is the point of this place for you?” and after getting the answer from Ahmet ESKİYAPAN saying: “I enjoy the whether and the view here”, he never showed up anymore. As the excavation was being done, the orders for the facilities and units of the cement factory was forwarded to Humbold company in Germany and in a short period of time such as 18 months, factory was installed, furnished and started production. Meanwhile I resigned from my job at Konya Cement Factory and started as the director general at Hereke Cement Factory. Hereke Cement Factory, regarding the piece of land starting from its location until Dilovası, contains huge resources of the raw material for cement, has an endless raw material source land. As the cement factory started production and had no operation or management problems at all, the owners had appointed one of the founder partners Mustafa ALİKİŞOĞLU who was an architect, at the factory which I suppose the reason was to get rid of my salary which was 15.000 TL. After a short while, I informed the owners that I desire to resign from my job because I thought it was inappropriate to have two directors in charge in the factory. After long arguments, I left the factory and came back to Ankara. I was offered to have appointments in Ankara Cement Factory and in the inspection committee. I didn’t get any jobs for two months period. After that, I preferred to start teh assignment as the director general at Ankara Cement Factory. Ankara Cement Factory was established to provide the necessary cement for Çubuk dam which was built to meet the increasing water needs of Ankara after declared as the capital city. The factory which was built at first with a very simple vertical system that is not even worth thinking to be built when compared to today’s systems, afterwards was transformed to a factory that operates with wet system. When my appointment was done, even this system had already lost its profitability and was switched to dry system in the production of cement. On one hand as I was working on the required facilities to be established and carry out the necessary preliminary work to switch to dry system, on the other hand invitations through various channels were unveiled for me to go back to Nuh Cement Factory at Hereke where I established the factory in person.
There was a director’s residence with a garden at Ankara Cement Factory. As a person who enjoys gardening, I was pretty happy and peaceful to be resided there. Besides my daughter Neşe started college in Ankara. In addition, we had the chance to reunite as a family and live together. Although the salary I was receiving was the highest a state employee can get in the cement factory which was a govermental facility, it was incomparable to the salary I was offered in the private sector. As I was carrying on the corrections and modernizations at Ankara Cement Factory, CEO of Nuh Cement Factory Ahmet ESKİYAPAN was demanding me to go back to Hereke persistently. I was in deep hesitation about which I should prefer under these conditions. As I was a government clerk for a very long time, I had my position chacked whether I was able to retire from state employment by adding the time I worked for the private sector to my work time as a civil servant. It was good news that I was able to retire from state employment as a director general as my scale of salaries was 1st degree 4th step and could receive 500 TL retirement wage. As a result I decided to apply to Emekli Sandığı (retirement fund) for my retirement and go back to Hereke. Meanwhile, Ahmet ESKİYAPAN and Burhan DİNÇBAL who was a founder partner wrote a letter to me stating that they were going to remove second director general Ali EKŞİOĞLU from the position and I was going to be the director general in charge only. So I started my assignment at Hereke Cement Factory as the director general once again. I shall mention only one of the main reasons why they persistantly demanded me to go back to Hereke. For example, during my absence, the amount of loading material like grinder balls and silpeps was 130 tons which is the upper limit for grinding machines, was increased to 180 tons and as a result of this, reducer wheels and lantern wheels were broken which caused long delays in the production. After I started my assignment in Hereke, I have read about a new system which helped to increase the clinker production was developed from a relevant litareture. After observing the system installed in the cement factories which operated with dry system in Europe, I decided to apply the system in our cement factory. With the authorization I got from the board of directors, I started the necessary procedures. The name of this system was Pasec Method. Without any changes done in the tilting rotary furnaces or clinker coolers, only by installing the Pasec system in the pre-warming system, the daily clinker production capacity was increased from 1.200 tons to 3.000 tons and as a result the cement production costs was dropped dramatically. So Nuh Cement Industries Inc. had gained the ability to be more competitive and with the chance to export its entire annual production abroad with very competitive prices, it gained the immunity from the domestic price fluctuations. Nuh Cement Factory, with its problem free production regarding the sales and with a considerable amount of distribution of its earnings to its shareholders, utilized its capital reserves by revaluation methods to increase its production capacity by hundred percent without demanding any payment from its shareholders. In a short period of time, by installing a second tilting rotary furnace system which is the same as the first one, hte produciton capacity was increased by hundred percent. Considering its status today, Nuh Cement Factory continues its production as one of the two cement factories in the world that had the highest competitive business (another is in Norway) according to the statements took place in the literature abroad. By evaluting these facts, the board of directors decided to increase the present production capacity by hundred percent by the approval of the general shareholders and started the necessary investment procedures that will allow the increase in its daily clinker production capacity from 6.000 tons to 12.000 tons by the end of 2004. From tha date I was assigned in Nuh Cement Industries Inc. until July 1991, my services as the director general and the member of board of directors continued, and from the date mentioned until today my services still continues as a member of board of directors. Seyit A. ULUBAY Kozyatağı-May 26th, 2004 |