Ilka Plastik, which is one of the leading brands in the plastics industry and was established within the Kanık Group of Companies in 1983, produces films used in various industries and the food preservation market. B.Bahadır Karaarslan, General Manager of Ilka Plastik, indicated that they produce lamination films used in the packaging of various foods, and added: “Printed or transparent shrink films for various packages are also within our product range. In addition, we have a wide product range in the industrial field with our products such as printed or transparent stretch hood film used in the outer casing of palletized products, industrial polyethylene films, PVC stretch film used in industrial food packaging. We produce all kinds and sizes of printed and unprinted, low and high density polyethylene bags, shopping bags, garbage bags, medical waste bags and refrigerator bags.
B. Bahadır Karaarslan noted that they have expanded their product range to bring solutions suitable for industrial needs and talked about their investments in this field and added that; "We have invested in machinery and infrastructure to produce multi-layered films with different structures that appeal to the food preservation market. With this investment, we came up with a strategic roadmap where we focus more on industrial solutions. With the investments that will be realized in this field in 2023, our product range and production capacity will increase.”
R&D center to be opened this year will add strength
Underlining that Ilka Plastik have started to work to gain an R&D Center status, Karaarslan continued: "This year, we will activate our R&D Centre. We aim to be the 8th center in our industry. In this regard, we have made our infrastructure and technical equipment investments. When we officially put our R&D center into operation, we will start the process by allocating 5 percent of our turnover. This rate will increase rapidly in the following years. We carry out studies to replace imports in line with the needs of the sector we address under the umbrella of R&D.'
'Our target is 7 million dollars export'
Stating that their sales tonnages increased by 27 percent in the first half of 2022, Karaarslan gave the following information about their targets:
“Our turnover increased 250 percent compared to last year. In the increase in turnover, even though the increase in the exchange rate had a driving effect on the increase in turnover compared to the previous year, we can say that we achieved a good growth momentum in the first half of this year when we exclude the inflation effect. Our year-end targets in 2023 are to reach 7 million USD export and 35 million USD total sales turnover. We aim to reach a daily production capacity of 55 tons with the realization of our investments in 2022 with a budget of 7 million Euros. Underlining that they are planning to open up to the Russian market with the new investments made, Karaarslan said, "We are planning to open up to the Russian market as well as continuing our activities in the Balkan countries, Caucasus and Middle East markets where we are present."
Talking about their investments of Ilka Plastik, Karaarslan said, "We have invested in a 9-storey Barrier Pe Balloon line and 5-layer OPE Balloon Line to increase our industrial solutions management capacity under the roof of Ilka Pack and Ilka IND." Emphasizing that they also produce OPE Film, Lamination Film, Barrier Film, Compressing Film, Protection Film and Shrink Film, Karaarslan stated that these lines are planned to be commissioned in the 3rd quarter of 2023 and said, "We are also adding doypack products to the product group with the Doypack Packaging Machine investment. We planned to produce food storage bags with this line. Relevant lines will be commissioned in the first quarter of 2023. Our goal is to produce films for recyclable packaging materials by simplifying the film structure by producing films that replace each other in multi-layer film structures. The ultimate goal of the investments we are making is to change the structure of some packaging films, which are currently impossible to recycle, to be 100 percent recyclable," he said.