Among other things, Yavuz Eroğlu has been president of Turkish plastics industry association Pagev (Istanbul; www.pagev.org) since 2017, board member at EuPC (Brussels; www.plasticsconverters.eu) since 2012, and was general manager at packaging manufacturer SEM Plastik (Istanbul; www.semplastik.com), where he is now chairman of the board.
In an exclusive interview, Eroğlu spoke to PIE about recycling in Turkey, the state of the country’s plastics industry, EU-Turkey relations, and more.
PIE: Let’s start with something general. How is the Turkish plastics industry doing?
Yavuz Eroğlu: Good! And there’s currently a big transformation, mainly in green transition and recycling. The new legislations in Europe are also affecting Turkish industry. There is a customs union between Turkey and the EU, so what’s done here is copied into Turkish law for conformity. The Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation and the Single-Use Plastics act, for example, come to the Turkish market after some time, with mandatory content and recycling targets. This means the industry watches the EU and tries to transform already. But also, there is a lot of customer awareness and there are a lot of active international companies that already have commitments to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
So you’re saying recycling is already going strong. How is the country handling waste imports?
Eroğlu: Recycling is the big new thing in the Turkish market. For one, Turkey has a good geographical position. It’s close to Europe, and already enjoys good relations and a big trade volume. The population of Turkey and its big tourism industry are also a positive factor – a lot of consumption means we have a lot of waste to recover.
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And also, with our lobbying activity as the industry, we managed to work with the government and have a more liberal waste policy. The government wanted to ban importation of waste, but we said no, importing recyclable waste from everywhere around the world is good. We told the government that the actual solution is to put the system for monitoring the waste, giving big audits and checking if all is right. But recyclates are the new raw material of the future. So, anybody who controls the recyclable waste has a great advantage. Trading of imported waste is banned, though. You can import as a recycler, but you cannot sell the waste to another one. We just want it to be recycled.
Decarbonisation is also currently a big topic. What is the Turkish industry doing there?
Eroğlu: Like everywhere, there was a great government incentive for producing solar energy. I’ll give my own example: I invested in solar energy panels last year and now produce about 30% of my energy from there. But to do more, I would have to buy land. For decarbonisation, the projects within companies start with suppliers. For example, when buying raw material, we speak to them about their energy usage and carbon emissions. But honestly, it’s not a fast development compared to recycling. It is now picking up with measuring the carbon emissions for certification, there are a lot of companies in that step right now.
A report on the Turkish plastics industry showed record highs for consumption and production in 2023, despite high inflation. What contributed to last year’s very good growth?
Eroğlu: One of the factors is the bad economy. So, the good news about plastics is the bad news about the economy. Consuming power has gone down. Consumers’ wealth has gone down because of high inflation, and they tend to buy cheaper alternatives that will solve their problems. The second factor, I think, is that the domestic market is still increasing the consumption of plastics. When asked, people are aware of the bad effects on the environment, but also they are not ready to pay, say, 5% more for the other products.
So, inflation is actually helping the plastics industry?
Eroğlu: Yes, exactly. But it will not do it for long. For a while when consumers lose their buying power, they change to cheaper alternatives. But if they suffer much more, purchasing will go down, because they will also stop buying even the cheaper alternatives. The government is trying to cope with this inflation. That’s why they increased interest rates. We’ll see in four months or six months how this works.
Related: Production, domestic sales in Turkey decline in the first half 2024
And the Ukraine war, what has been the impact on your country’s plastics industry?
Eroğlu: Not significant. Turkey’s position in the Ukraine-Russian war was like a mediator and both of them accepted it. The bad thing is Turkey and Russia had big business. But because of the embargo, Turkey has to find another way to sell its products. What is interesting is that Turkish industry started selling to China and apparently China was selling to Russia. We thought it was curious that our export to China is increasing because China is so cheap. So we asked the buyers, do you use it? No. They said they sell it to Russia sometimes.
The EU industry is getting worried about competitiveness, especially considering sustainability issues. Pagev is a member of the EuPC, but not a member of the EU. What’s your view on the whole situation as an organisation, on both the inside and outside here?
Eroğlu: I can see that this protectionism will not be able to solve the problem of the EU. All you’ve done is gain some time, but you have to have a sustainable solution. First, the biggest problem, everybody knows that Europe has to increase innovation. Then, you have to find the right partners. By the way, I am a strong supporter of EU-Turkey relations. Unfortunately, after years of hard politics, the trust is gone, but I hope that it will build up again. Turkey and the EU, they are much stronger if they can find a way to collaborate – the business world, that is, I’m not talking about politicians.
Related: Industry reps stress need to collaborate at EuPC annual meet
And another issue is that Far East is the biggest competition disadvantage for Europe – different approaches, different working systems, different costs, different legislation framework. And all this leads to different pricing. This is a big problem, which I think the EU cannot solve by itself. One part is that Eastern Bloc countries can help solve this problem. Innovation has to stay here. But then, the other part, you have to make some collaborations. And my idea is that Turkey and the EU are a good match. The only problem now is that the climate of policy has to change. There’s too much politics. I don’t like it.
Do you mean EU policies?
Eroğlu: Both of them! It's not only the EU, Turkey is also provoking and overregulating. We have good and deep relations with the European plastics industry. There’s a lot of European countries invested in Turkey. And there’s Turkish companies, especially in the recycling industry, still investing in Europe. We have to increase that. This would be positive for both sides. This is what I think.
Thank you very much for speaking with us.
