The story of Yünsa, one of the five largest top-segment wool fabric manufacturers in the world today, began in 1973. Yünsa, which started its operations by producing top quality men's wear woolen woven fabric, diversified its products with women, uniforms and upholstery fabrics over the years. Yünsa, which opened its offices in Italy in 2002, England in 2007 and Germany in 2009, still exports to more than to 50 countries. Being fabric supplier of major international fashion brands. Company contributes to the economy of the country as a leader in the export of woolen fabrics. Since its existence in public in 1990, it continues its activities with the goal of "sustainability with value creation targets profitability.’ ’Yünsa comes forth with upper segment products and innovative offerings in Turkish market which represent the nation in global arena with consecutive successes. Yünsa General Manager Mustafa Sürmegöz sincerely answered all of the questions of our publication group. Good readings…
Q. Can you give information about your products and product quality?
A. As Europe's largest integrated woven fabric manufacturer, we have an annual production capacity of 4,500 tons of worsted yarn and 9,5 million meters of woven fabric. While a large part of our product portfolio consists of 100 percent woolen fabrics; Cashmere, silk, cotton, polyester, viscose blended woolen fabrics are also included in our rich product range. As Yünsa, we have a wide range of products from casual and business fabrics for men and women to uniforms, bus and airplane seat upholstery. In addition to these product groups, we have Lifestyle Premium collections created by blending wool, a 100 percent natural and sustainable raw material, with special natural fibers such as linen, silk and cashmere, and enriching them with ambitious touches. In addition, by developing capsule collections suitable for changing market needs and fashion trends, we take part in the showcases of giant brands with our assertive design. As Yünsa, we attach importance to offering comfort, lasting performance and durability together in our collections.
Q. What do you pay attention to in your production?
A. The focus of our business is to get together wool, which is a common work of nature and human labor and a very valuable raw material, with high quality. Our production philosophy is based on innovation, respect for the environment and sustainability. We carry out our innovation-oriented R&D and P&D studies with our young teams and well-trained engineers in an effort to achieve better for people, for the environment and for the world.
In this quality journey, we never forget our responsibility towards the world and future generations. Global problems such as climate change and natural resource use are among the most important items on our agenda in all our processes. We are aware that sustainability is of critical importance in the textile industry in which we operate, and we carry out many studies to develop sustainable and ecological production processes in textiles at the Yünsa R&D Center. We are constantly looking for new ways to increase the value of recycled raw materials in our production and to reduce waste that can adversely affect the nature.
In this way, we make our production sustainable and we act responsibly for a better and livable world. While serving this purpose, we have achieved many important innovations in the wool fabric sector, and we are proud of this.
Q. In what ways Yünsa differs from its competitors, what makes you different?
A. Our main purpose was to produce with value added and sustainability approach while not polluting to our nature and environment and while protecting our natural reserves in which we have succeeded with the appreciations in global arena. Of course, we have never compromised on quality during our journey. Fabrics we produced with its environmentally friendly production processes, with its high-quality thanks to our R &D team and their visionary perspective, our manufactures exceeds all of its rivals both in Turkey and around the world. Speed and flexibility are other factors that set us apart from our competitors. We differentiate ourselves in the market by giving shorter deadlines to our customers, especially compared to our competitors in Europe.
Q. What is your share of the world market and in Turkey?
A. As Yünsa, we have an annual production capacity of 9.5 million meters of upper segment wool fabric. There is a global market of 500 million meters for woven wool fabric. Turkey only controls 6 per cent of this market and as Yünsa, we conduct more than one third of domestic production. We leave approximately 30 percent of our production for our domestic customers and the majority of it’s with 70 percent goes our foreign customers. As Yünsa, we export to more than 50 countries and our customer portfolio includes more than 400 names that have a say in world fashion. Germany, England, Italy, France, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Romania, Japan, South Korea, America and Russia are the leading countries we export to.
In addition to supplying woolen fabrics to world-famous brands, we are also producing ready-made garments. We have produced more than 500 thousand pieces of ready-to-wear garments so far and exported 66 percent of these garments to England. We export with quality and design to England, which is famous for its yarn and fabric. After England, our biggest markets in ready-to-wear are France, Germany and Northern European countries.
Growing our presence in the Far East, especially in Japan, is among our goals in the wool fabric field. In addition, we continue our efforts to have a strong word in Italy, which is considered the center of fashion in Europe.
Q. Yünsa, ranked as the best textile companies with its work and achievements in Turkey. To what extent do you attach importance to R&D studies related to development of new products?
A. As Yünsa, we aim to develop high value-added and innovative products in order to reinforce our leading position in textile exports and to increase our competitive power in the world, to conduct an ecological and environmentally friendly production process. Our R&D studies are of vital importance in achieving this goal. We have an R&D and innovation team consisting of 40 people, each of whom experts in their fields. Our team is always doing their work to make our products more natural and long-lasting. We have a proud of achieving products as nation’s first antiviral featured worsted fabric, 100 percent biodegradable BioGreen fabric which has seen the finishing process with plant oils harvested from wild nature and has 8 times lower carbon footprint than its equivalents and with range of innovative products alike.
Q. Can you give information about your machines, quality certificates and awards you have?
A. As Yünsa, we continue our renovation and modernization investments without slowing down during the pandemic period. Last year, we made an investment of 2 million Euros within the scope of our modernization works on our production line. This year, we are channeling an investment of 4 million Euros in this field. We are replacing our 12 weaving looms with 2020 model state-of-the-art Dornier looms, which have 2 times higher turnover than the existing looms. We have been carrying out investment projects and improvement studies on industry 4.0, IOT (internet of things), RFID (radio frequency identification), smart wearable technologies and digitalization, especially in our machines for the last three years. Today, all our engineers and managers can monitor our 650 machines online from any environment they are in. In this way, we create the opportunity to improve our processes with big data analytics by collecting meaningful data. Many reports and presentations, which were prepared manually or with office applications in the past, are now created automatically, quickly and efficiently by transferring all data to digital media.
As for our quality certificates and certificates; In our journey, which started with the ISO 9001 Quality Management System Certificate we received in 1998, today we have ISO 14001 Environmental Management System, IS0 45001 Occupational Health and Safety System, ISO 27001 Information Security Management System and ISO 50001 Energy Management System certificates, as well as Eko-Tex, which ensures quality in production. We are proud to have 100, Responsible Wool Standard (RWS), Global Recycled Standard (GRS) and Recycled Claim Standards (RCS) certificates.
Q. How important was the market's demand for flexibility and different fabric types in choosing your machine park?
A. We depend and consider the dynamics of the market and the potential developments that may occur in the future as inputs in the design of both in our products and in all kinds of machine parks we create. Shrinking volumes in orders, increasing flexibility and time to market expectations are important factors that shape our current technology in line with these targets. For this reason, we carefully examine the returns we receive from customers and the market, and make our investment plans in a way that can turn the issues here into opportunities. With the pandemic process, many changes have occurred in the purchasing habits of the customers. We have implemented new products to our range by changing our products and collections in line with these new habits.
Q. How was 2020 for Yünsa? Could you give information on goals set, expectations targeted and overall outlook for 2021?
A. Pandemic was the only reason for any significant change in the expectations of the world textile industry in 2020, not only Turkey. Despite the negative atmosphere posed by the current conditions in the sector, we are happy to have finalized 2020 in a better state compared to the previous year. In the early days of the pandemic, we reviewed our strategies and drew a new road map. Our agile practices in the management of production costs, operating and financing expenses enabled us to overcome this period without stoppage. We focused on financial efficiency with our solid capital structure, and with the new partnership structure, we quickly implemented the first phase of our company's accumulated investment plans. In the New Year, we aim to continue our profitable growth without losing this agile structure. In addition, our radars are always open against opportunities that may occur abroad. We carefully follow the developments that will enable us to increase our presence especially in the Far East and Europe. Our research and feasibility studies for side areas related to our industry also continue.
