Elektra Elektronik develops and offers products and solutions, combining their long-standing experience and know-how with cutting-edge technologies in electronics.
Interview with Emin Armağan Şakar, General Manager of Elektra Elektronik.
Easy Engineering: A brief description of the company and its activities. What are the main areas of activity of the company?
Emin Armağan Şakar: We achieved a significant prominence in our industry thanks to our intensive investment in R&D since 2010. In 2019, we doubled up the capacity of our factory, which now has a footprint of 10 thousand square meter. Today, we enjoy the position of being the leading company of Turkey in low-voltage transformer and reactor industry in terms of production capacity, number of employees and export volume. With transformer, reactor, energy quality and power electronics solutions, we are an energy quality provider for major projects in a diverse host of industries in both Turkey and in the world, such as construction, rail systems, electricity, electronics, automation, robotics, iron&steel, machinery, crane industry, elevator, lighting, health, defense industry and maritime, in particular.
From our Istanbul-based factory, we are exporting our in-house developed and produced transformers and electronics to 60 countries, particularly China, Spain, Germany, France, New Zealand, on a total of 6 continents, including Africa, Middle East and South America. 40 percent of our export, which account for 50 percent of our total turnover, is made to Europe. We are also present in German market with our Germany, Cologne-based company, Elektra Power Quality GmbH. This company represents our one of the most significant investment, which greatly contributes to Elektra’s international business operations. We are among very few Turkish companies who managed to sell electronics to China. In addition, we also have a sales office in China.
E.E: What’s the news for 2021 about new products?
E.A.Ş: In the light of our continuous development mindset, we continue developing all of our products. We plan to develop further our DynamiX Active Harmonic Filter, a cutting-edge technology in the harmonic solutions, first and solely produced by our company in Turkey to eliminate energy quality problems of industry, making it a global product. We have speedup our efforts to integrate communication system to this product, enabling monitoring via cloud and improve its software features. Targeting at eliminating a company which produce one of the highest performing active harmonic filter. Further, we added a new member to our DynamiX series. As a device offering a faster compensation and harmonic filtering to industrial and business facilities, DynamiX series eliminates the risk of resonance thanks to new Static Var Generator (SVG) preventing unnecessary shutdowns and improving the power quality. DynamiX Static Var Generator is mainly used in the steel mills, mining and construction industry which have variable reactive power requirements. Furthermore, our transformers which stand out with its many features including lower loss, high efficiency, maximum isolation level, silent operation, moisture resistance, are a top choice solution in Turkey as well as heavily preferred in China which has set the benchmarks for the world in the high-speed trains.
E.E: What are the ranges of products?
E.A.Ş: We serve the industries with our transformer, reactor, energy quality and power electronics solutions. Our transformer range includes control, isolation, medical, auto and motor starter auto transformers. Our reactors consist of harmonic filters, shunts, as well as line and motor driver output reactors. Our compensation solutions range from discharge unit to LV capacitors from inductive load driver to thyristor module. Our harmonic solutions are sinus filter, passive harmonics, and active harmonic filter. Our MV solutions can be listed as iron core harmonic filter reactors, air core harmonic filter reactors, MV capacitors and current-limiting reactors.
All products and entire production line of Elektra Elektronik is always subject to strict internal and third-party independent audits. This enables us to meet ever-stricter safety and quality requirements and ensure conformity of our products to the current world standards. With the target of offering always-same quality and safety to ever-expanding world market, we are receiving new certificates, besides our current certifications. With the UL certification which enable export to the USA, we are the first and sole brand which holds this certification for a reactor product range in our country.
Emin Armağan Şakar
E.E: At what stage is the market where you are currently active?
E.A.Ş: Since power distribution unit industry is a labor-intensive production area, we are able to enjoy price advantages thanks to products manufactured in our country. At this stage, our country has a serious potential in terms of world power distribution unit industry. During the pandemic, Turkey demonstrated its strength once more in this area, given the alternative producer search of the Europe. In this respect, our country has a significant share in export of the power distribution units. As long as the developing countries like Turkey continue investments, power distribution unit investment shall continue in parallel.
E.E: What can you tell us about market trends?
E.A.Ş: Next-gen core materials is one of the key factors which steer the development of the power distribution unit industry. This enabled reduced losses at the higher frequencies. Yield limitations has been introduced for the larger size power distribution units, which led producers to revise their designs and if necessary, switch to alternative materials. In the recent years, positive market conditions and technological developments speed up the digitalization rates of the energy systems. While demand and supply has been becoming more dynamic and uncertain, coupled with the changing nature of them, it requires faster agility, analysis and control. On the other hand, technological developments on both sides of the electricity meter bring along the new digital technologies, also enabling integration with the constantly evolving grid automation systems
E.E: What estimations do you have for 2021?
E.A.Ş: Thanks to the digitalization and R&D investments on which we have been concentrating our efforts in the recent years, we, as Elektra Elektronik expect 15 percent growth in 2021. As a result of our digitalization investments, we are monitoring our production, warehouse and all other business processes through cloud solutions this year. Also, we focused on the international growth by penetrating into new markets. Our goal is to boost our export volume by 10 percent by increasing the number of our export countries. To this end, we continue our investment and marketing research efforts for countries, which potential we strongly believe in.