Miller Magazine Issue: 125 May 2020

79 TECHNOLOGY PLATFORM MILLER / MAY 2020 During the coronavirus pandemic process, many major producer countries that are exporters of grain have stopped or restricted their foreign sales to guarantee their people's food safety. Countries dependent on imports, particularly Egypt, tried to make large purchases in panic. In this process where the food supply chain has come to a breaking point, it has been understood how vital grain storage capacities are. As Miller Magazine, we had the chance to talk with Sefa Saatçioğlu, General Manager of Mysilo, one of the world's leading companies in grain storage, about the future of the industry and Turkey's general situation in this context. Below are Mr. Saatçioğlu's evaluations: Mr. Saatçioğlu, can you please give us information about your company and its fields of activity? Our company was established in 2000 under the struc- ture of SFA GROUP in Aksaray with a 40-year production experience to produce grain storage silos and handling equipment. Since our establishment, we have transformed into a young, innovative, continuously developing, expert and leading organization by carrying out more than 2500 projects in more than 80 countries across 5 continents. We put our consistent performance, demonstrating an exam- ple of sustainable growth in Turkey and we have taken our place among the world's most powerful and reputable com- panies on an industrial basis. 40 million tons of grain can be stored annually in all do- mestic and foreign facilities we have installed since our es- tablishment. This is almost equal to the annual grain harvest of Turkey. It is an incredible source of pride for us. One of the issues that distinguish our com- pany from our biggest competitors is the im- portance we attach to R&D. We are the only Turkish company in our industry that has offi- cial R&D and we allocate a substantial annual budget. Thanks to the value we attach to our R&D and employees, we have always brought to- gether the countries we work in with the latest technology. We constantly add new products to our portfolio. These works continue without slowing down with a team of 25 expert engi- neers. We manage our quality management sys- tems with our professional corporate identity, and the process that starts with the demand from our customers with our special software that we have written within our organization ensures that everything is traceable from proj- ect to pricing, production, shipment, assembly, and after-sales services. This gave us the ability to make improvements by making very quick decisions. One of the biggest advantages of our silos is that we pro- duce them with the steel sheets that have the narrowest corrugation on the world. The corrugated form of our silos on the wall sheets has a measure of 65mm pitch. We are the only company that can make production in these di- mensions. This means that the strength of our silos is higher than our competitors. Can you tell us about your product portfolio? Our product range is very extensive. We produce most of the equipment that may be needed in grain storage facilities in our own facility. We are not dependent on any company. We can produce all the necessary equipment such as steel grain storage silos, the handling equipment we use in loading and unloading, temperature monitoring systems inside the silo, control automation systems of the facility, pre-cleaning machines, and dust collection systems. In addition, we offer professional project design services with our 'Silopark' company and we stand by our turnkey business partners at every stage with our after-sales ser- vices. We have 4 companies operating under the structure of SFA GROUP: • Siloport Grain Storage Systems Inc. Co., our production company, • Silopark Construction & Machine Industry Inc. Co., our company which manages domestic sales and marketing op- erations, • Mysilo Grain Storage Systems Inc. Co., our company which manages overseas sales and marketing operations, and