Established in 1993, Petroyağ is today one of the largest industrial oil suppliers in Turkey with its 22 percent market share. In March, the company celebrated its 25th anniversary with a splendid ceremony. We talked about the history of the company and discussed their future projections with Ünal Soysal, Founder and Chairman of the Board.
Petroyağ, a leading industrial lubricant company in Turkey, is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. The company, founded in 1993 and moved to its plant in Gebze Organized Industrial Zone in 2014 with an investment value of 15 million Euros, is today setting higher goals for the future.
The company organized a gala dinner at Esma Sultan Mansion to celebrate their 25th anniversary with the participation of senior executives of leading chemical and lubricant companies as well as İKMİB President Murat Akyüz, PETDER Secretary General Niyazi İlter, and MAPESAD President Tayfun Koçak. At the event, Ünal Soysal made a speech and underlined that he still feels the same excitement for 25 years. He stated that Petroyağ will continue making R&D investments with the aim of creating more added value to the Turkish industry. He also emphasized their works for increasing the number of export countries.
Ünal Soysal, Petroyağ’s Founder and Chairman of the Board, briefly defines their story of success as such: “I acted very quickly after taking the decision to establish my own company, and I managed to give confidence to all my business partners. Thanks to this confidence, Petroyağ succeeded in overcoming four economic crises and even achieving further growth despite the crises. Our secret of success is the concentration on nothing but our business. We earned money and we invested this money in our business again, which brought together more profit and more growth.”
Foundations laid in a 23-sq-meter office with only 100 TL capital
After working in the lubricants sector for 12 years, Ünal Soysal decided to take part in this sector with his own company. He established Petroyağ in 1993 at a small office in Kocaeli, and started to provide counselling and procurement services on industrial lubricants and chemicals. The company began importing goods in 1993, and increased its sales volume in 1995 by signing distributorship agreement for Petrol Ofisi and Texaco lubricants. The company managed to increase its capital from 100 TL to 10,000 TL in just two years.
The Gölcük Earthquake of 1999 hit Petroyağ as well. Office building of the company collapsed, but the management acted quickly, built a new office within the warehouse and continued their operations from this office. In terms of their growth strategy, Ünal Bey says, “The more we offered special solutions to customer needs in the sector, the more we had new customers.”
Growth curve continued with new facility and new distributorships
The office was no longer enough to fit the company’s constantly growing volume of business. Thereupon, Petroyağ opened its filling, blending and packaging plant on an area of 5500 square meters in 2003. With this plant, it speeded up exports and granted distributorship in various countries. In 2007, it started to produce transformer oils and became the third transformer oil manufacturer in Turkey.
By 2010, Petroyağ had increased the number of countries that it exported products to 16, became a member of the Union of the European Lubricants Industry (UEIL), and took the 885th place in the Top 1000 Largest Industrial Enterprises List by Istanbul Chamber of Commerce (ISO). After that, it continued to climb up ISO’s Top 1000 list.
As the volume of domestic sales and exports increased, the need for new investments increased, too. Soysal initiated the investment project for a new plant with a capacity of 50,000 tons in 2012 in Gebze Organized Industrial Zone. This project was completed in 2013, and institutional structuring started rapidly.
333rd R&D center in Turkey
In 2017, Petroyağ established the 333rd R&D center in Turkey with domestic capital and became the first company in the industrial oils sector, which established an R&D center and laboratory with the research and development support of the Ministry of Science, Industry and Technology and with an investment value of 1.7 million TL.
Since day one, the company produces special lubricants for industrial applications to meet the needs of industrialists, and provides products and services in niche areas. For this purpose, it develops innovative products at this R&D center and laboratory.
Petroyağ today
Ünal Soysal describes Petroyağ’s present situation and future objectives as follows: “We are working with leading companies in almost all sectors of Turkish industry. Currently, we dominate 22 percent of Turkish industrial oil market. We export more than 50 products to 33 countries. Our goal is to increase the number of export countries to 40 and the volume of exports to 30 percent of our sales. We have distributors in 14 countries.
Our operations can be roughly divided into two categories: We are a supplier of largest industrial lubricant companies across the world, and we also produce our lubricating products for the companies that have special needs. Our main product groups include white oils, aluminum rolling oils, transformer oils and process oils. In our product range, we also have food grade lubricants and various other products such as baby oil, suntan oil, cosmetic, thermoplastic, and animal vaccines.
We are aiming to maintain our current capacity for the future period while developing oleo chemicals, mainstreaming global industrial applications in Turkey, increasing our exports, and producing innovative products in our R&D center. With intensive works at our plants and R&D center, we will be able to provide a product for only 2.5 million TL, which is currently imported for 50 million TL. In this way, we will make a great contribution to our country.”
