Exemplary Industrialist

Tarık Sarvan, the boss of Türkiye's leading solar panel manufacturer CW Enerji, explained the secret of his success: ‘The secret is to make the right decision and make the right analysis. If you do both of these and work hard, you will be successful.’

Seher Özen Karadeniz / Business Antalya Interview

When he established theCW Enerji factory in Antalya, Tarık Sarvan, who took his company to the top ranks of the sector without paying attention to the words ‘what are you doing in Antalya when you are in Istanbul’ that he frequently heard at the beginning, aims to export approximately 60 million dollars this year.

With the life lesson he learnt from losing his way when the fog descended on the shortcuts he used to shorten the road while walking in the Black Sea springs; Sarvan, who said ‘if you want to do the right job, don't take shortcuts’, says that his success in his business is partly due to this. Stating that determination, knowledge and hard work have brought success to himself and his company, Sarvan's advice to young people is: ‘Always get an education and enter business life.’

We met with Tarık Sarvan, Chairman of the Board of Directors ofCW Enerji , for businessantalya.com. Rather than production figures and new products, we talked to Tarık Sarvan about the award he received on International Labour Women's Day, his way of doing business, his management style and the steps that brought success to him and his company.

The energy market knows CW Enerjiclosely. However, when you were awarded by Muratpaşa Municipality on Women's Day for your equal approach to women's employment, your name was heard among a completely different audience. You were also the only man to receive an award. How did you feel when you received the award?

To tell you the truth, we did not expect to receive such an award. I was surprised too. When I took the stage to receive the award, I felt that I had done something very important. As CW Enerji, I am also proud that we have been deemed worthy of such an award for contributing to the employment of our women, whose main duty is seen as childcare and housework. In general, girls are not educated in our country, so they are excluded from working life. However, our women are very skilful and disciplined while organising their home life. Our female staff between the ages of 30-40 who are currently working in our production facility consist of women who could not find a place for themselves in working life and could not acquire a profession. After 1 month of training, they started to work in our production facility. They work very meticulous and disciplined. In March 2018, we increased the number of women with SSI from 102 in 2016 to 542 in March 2018, an increase of 5 and a half times. In solar panel production, which involves a sensitive production process, we attach importance to benefiting from the skilful hands of women. In addition, we aim to increase the number of employees to 2 thousand people, 50 percent of whom will be women, by mid-2018. I hope that factories all over our country will act like us and our women can find an environment to prove themselves.

We know the story of CW Enerji. Could you tell us a little about your own story?

As a child of an expatriate family, I went to Germany when I was 17-18 years old. I met this sector in Germany in 1999. However, I could not be in the sector in those years. I have been in the sector professionally since 2007. We came to Türkiye in 2009 for market research. We established our company in 2010. We brought our machines. The market had not opened yet. There was no business. As such, we thought ‘who will do our job when things open up’. Electricians. Since there is no work, then let's train those who will do the work, we started training activities. We also gave certificates to those we trained. When the business started to open, this team started to sell our products first. Our name was heard through the whisper newspaper.

CW Enerji is already one of the most important renewable energy producers in Türkiye and has the largest solar panel production facility in Europe. With the investments you plan to make this year, you aim to become the solar panel manufacturer with the largest capacity in Europe and the Middle East. You have achieved this success in a very short period of time, 8 years? Is this rapid rise also related to the world's need for renewable energy?

Of course it does. In the beginning, we dismantled our production line in Germany and installed it here. In those years, interest in the sector was not yet at a sufficient level. As I mentioned above, we concentrated on trainings, and now our time has come. At the moment, there is no cycle left to spin with fossil fuels and atoms. The awareness of mankind on renewable, clean energy has also increased. Our state also supported this policy and paved the way for the sector. The fact that we know the business, that we have trained dozens of people before and that we have worked day and night for this business has brought this success.

When we set our own standards and the standards of the business, blended a little Turkish labour force, a little German discipline and worked hard, we became the breadwinner of hundreds of people.

You attract attention with your innovative products, you attract attention with your employment policies, and you return from the fairs you attend with awards for your fair performance. What do you explain this situation?

It has a lot to do with the decision-making mechanism and being educated. Let me explain this with an example. We all have a hunter in our brains. However, if you don't know what to hunt, you will catch whatever comes your way. Education comes into play there too. In Türkiye, someone opens a carpentry workshop. He does a good job. Other hunter brains immediately say, ‘He is doing a good job, let me open a workshop too’. An educated brain does not do this. We need educated brains. My sector was different and I was not a competitor to anyone. When I came to Türkiye, I could have said ‘let me open a doner shop’. We started with a business that no one else was doing and we became one of the leading players. The secret is to make the right decision and make the right analysis. If you do both of these and work hard, you will be successful. And you will definitely not take shortcuts. You will always go the right way, you will not change horses on the way.

Do you also know doner Kebab?

I know gastronomy very well. In Germany, it is not possible to make a living by doing only one job. I used to work at least two other jobs besides the factory. Gastronomy was one of them. I even established a chicken farm on our ancestral land in Sakarya at a very young age.

Are you planning an increase in your production capacity in 2018?

As of the end of 2017, as CW Enerji, we had 420 MW solar panel production capacity in our existing factory. In the middle of this year, we will move to our new factory in Antalya Organised Industrial Zone, which is 46 thousand square metres in size and has a solar panel production capacity of 920 MW. In addition, we have made all agreements for another factory in Antalya Free Zone, which we plan to start with a production capacity of 120 MW in the first stage and increase it up to 500 MW by the end of 2018.

YourR&D and P&D activities are also much talked about. Is there a new product coming soon?

We are thinking of placing the product we call PowerPack on the clothes of our people working in the field. We are working on designs that will enable them to obtain the energy to charge their mobile phones with the sun shining on their backs. The pilot studies of these projects, which we have designed for those engaged in sports such as hunting and sailing, will also be launched this year. In our sector, we are at the same point where the world is. We are currently producing with PERC cells. We want to further develop the innovative product, which we call the tile of the century, in a way to protect the temperature and coldness of the interior and present it to the market. Apart from this, we have also completed our work on panel technologies that we carry out together with TÜBİTAK, where we will get the energy we will get from 2 square metres from 1 square metre. It will take us 2023 to put this product on the market.

What is your export target for this year?

We have an export target of approximately 40 to 60 million dollars this year. I hope we will meet it.

‘We save both our country and the world from fossil fuels with every power plant we open.’

What can you say about the use of your products in personal users? Will ‘panels’ take the place of ‘day heaters’, which are sometimes criticised in terms of urban aesthetics for Antalya, even for the Mediterranean region?

Unfortunately, we cannot come together much with the Chambers of Electricity and Construction Chambers. After this time, the roof of a house to be built in a place like Antalya should be built with only one slope, ‘south’ slope. It would be much more logical to install a system where both solar panels and day heat will be placed on that southern slope. We cannot realise this in Antalya yet.

Why are the dynamics of the city so slow in sharing information that is valuable for the city and moving forward?

I think we have a lot of workload. Maybe we also have deficiencies. After all, this is an issue related to our sector, the authorities who will decide on this business do not have to know so much detail. We need to go to them, introduce, insist and make an example.

What can you say about the competition in the sector?

There are 30 panel manufacturer companies in our sector. We are the only one in Antalya. We understand what our customers want and stand by them in all pre-sales and after-sales processes. We do not say that we sell the panel to everyone and stand aside. I think we make a difference with this attitude and we are differentiated from our competitors. We do little and concise work.

You returned with various co-operations at the fair you attended in Iran in February. Could you tell us about CW Enerji's targets in foreign markets?

The Iranian government's 2020 target for the use of renewable energies has increased our interest in that market. On the other hand, the market we want to be in is the European market. We want to be in Europe, no matter how heavy its standards are. We also go to fairs there.

At the moment, the geography of the sun is Africa and the Arabian peninsula, where the Muslim population lives densely. In these lands, our sector has 2 to 3 per cent presence. These markets are also our target. Since the laws of the states here have not yet been settled, we are making preparations for them, and we are also participating in fairs in countries with a ready legal infrastructure for renewable energy and trying to make big projects there.

While we currently export to approximately 12 countries, mainly Germany, Romania, Switzerland, Iran, Morocco, Kosovo, Tunisia, Syria and Iraq, we will export to at least 20-25 countries with our new factory. We aim to sell products to new markets in America, Europe and Africa.

I lived in Erbil for a year. There is a lot of sunshine there, but there is also a shortage of electricity, and the city is supplied with electricity for 3-4 hours a day. Are you also present in that region?

We go there individually. We have special storage products that you can use from the sun during the day and from the battery in the evening. Our energy packages, which we call PowerPack, are designed for places where electricity is supplied for 3-4 hours a day. It works with the logic of a generator, but it is not as noisy and does not burn diesel. It gets energy from the sun during the day and from the battery in the evening. They can meet their own needs by purchasing these from us.

You are preparing for the Solarex Fair to be held at the Istanbul Expo Centre between 5 - 7 April. What can you say about both the fair and your participation?

For us, Solarex Istanbul is one of the most important fairs in Türkiye. We will come together with our dealers and even have the opportunity to add new dealers to our network.

At the fair, we have the opportunity to meet with the decision makers of the solar industry from Türkiye, Central and Western Europe, the Balkans, Russia, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, and we have the opportunity to increase our trade volume by showing our production power.

We will also introduce our products and services at Solarex 2018. We will tell our visitors about the small and large scale rooftop and land type photovoltaic, photovoltaic irrigation projects, ‘power pack off-grid’ system projects that we have completed in all four corners of Türkiye. In addition, our company's own production of power pack with German technology and Turkish engineering, smart box compact (inverter, battery, charge control device, plug and play device), the tile of the century developed by our own engineers (sealed solar panel suitable for the roof, special rubberised, We will bring together our roof tiles, which we call roof tiles (a system that is suitable for the roof, water-air-moisture-temperature impermeable, resistant to all weather conditions), BIPV glass glass coloured cell exterior cladding panels, PERC cell panels and solar panels with both domestic and foreign visitors.

What is your future perspective on renewable energy?

One of the points I want to reach the most in Türkiye is to sell 99 per cent of our production to Europe. Imagine such a factory where the employees work in Türkiye and Europe pays their salaries. On the other hand, each panel prevents the carbon emissions of 2 pine trees. With each power plant we open, we save both our country and the world from fossil fuels.

How is your relationship with environmentalists? Do they knock on your door for co-operation?

We are the most environmentally friendly energy. However, no one has knocked on our door for co-operation yet, maybe after this interview.

‘I sincerely want to be at every point where we will carry the past to the future.’

We know that you have a wrestling background. I would like to talk a little bit about this past and the support you have given to this sport as a sponsor in Antalya for about 3 years.

I think that we should support the activities and efforts to keep the heritage of our ancestors alive, regardless of which sector we are from. As much as we follow the technology, we need to know our past and carry it to future generations.

Wrestling is a sport that our people are interested in from far or near everywhere in Anatolia. It is also a sport that I have been devoted to since my childhood. We are very pleased to take part in every field that increases the interest of our people in sports, both personally and as the CW Enerji family. When they asked me to be an agha, I was very touched when I accepted and wore that local dress. I want to be at every point where we will carry the past to the future wholeheartedly.

Those who lived in Europe for a while, did business there and then returned home seem to be more sensitive and appreciative of the past heritage. What do you think?

Türkiye is much more valuable for European expatriates. Those who live here do not know the value of our country. They envy Europe. Everyone dreams of settling in Europe and doing business there. You can be sure that all Turks in Europe say ‘I should go back to my homeland and have a job there’. Since we experienced discrimination there, we learnt very well in Europe that we should protect our own country more.

What does Antalya mean to you?

At first, many people said to me ‘what are you doing in Antalya when you are in Istanbul’. I will give an example from abroad again. You go to a tiny village. A world giant brand has opened a factory. It provides employment there. If we all go to Istanbul, what will happen to the rest of Anatolia. We have a very little used harbour in Antalya. Because it is underutilised, some parts are closed and staff is reduced. We need to distribute our power. We looked at the position of Antalya and decided that we could do this job here. We opened our factory. Personally, I am from the Black Sea and this place is Yoruk. They are very similar to each other in terms of temperament. When I talk to them, I feel like I am talking to someone from the Black Sea. With those feelings, we embraced Antalya a little more.

We say that coffee is a pleasure. Where are your favourite places to enjoy coffee in Antalya?

I know that very nice and high quality places are being opened right now. I think I can enjoy wherever I go.

Which route would you recommend to those who will come to Antalya for the first time to follow in the city centre?

Kaleiçi, Konyaaltı, Lara regions of Antalya are places with a different atmosphere. Every tourist wants to visit historical places such as Side and Aspendos. If they ask me, they should definitely see Elmalı. Elmalı is one of the important touristic places of Antalya with its historical and natural beauties.

Before I finish, I would like to ask the following. Everyone, including you, is wearing a white shirt with the CW Enerji logo. Is there a speciality today, do you always dress like this?

We always dress like this. Just as we dress differently while cooking at home, planting flowers in the garden and welcoming guests, our work clothes are different.

All of our employees work in clothes that represent our company in the area they work in and in which they feel comfortable. I am not a person who sets the rules and does not follow them myself. This includes arrival and departure times. I don't let my staff come here on a shuttle service that I won't take myself. This is how I learnt: I don't feed what I don't eat, I don't dress what I don't wear, and I don't let anyone work in an environment where I don't think I can work. I have such a training. As a result, everyone is happy to do their job in every unit.