Bridges: How has Saray Bisküvi managed to sustain its innovation and product development trajectory over the years, and what are the key strategies behind launching new products in the market?
Özdağ: As a company serving more than 110 countries around the world, especially Türkiye, we have been delivering products to our consumers for more than 40 years without compromising on quality and efficiency. Innovation and sustainability are essential for newly launched and upcoming products, and all our stakeholders, especially our R&D department, continue their efforts to this end.
It is obvious that innovation brings profitable sales and growth; therefore, our sustainable product and growth strategy, the seeds of which were planted many years ago, has always had a positive impact on our turnover and profitability.
As Saray Biscuit, we have always taken care to be a pioneer in the sector with our operations both at home and in different geographies throughout the world for many years. It is a fact that every geography has different demands and needs. Being able to respond quickly and accurately to these demands with our agile management approach is what makes us stand out.
As a company serving more than 110 countries around the world, especially Türkiye, we have been delivering products to our consumers for more than 40 years without compromising on quality and efficiency.
Samed Özdağ, Chairman of Saray Biscuits
Grouping each product group according to different target audiences is an important process for proper marketing. Of course, every product can appeal to everyone, but determining the target audience is an extremely important process to reach the right target and increase the sales and success of a product. Therefore, when we are in the process of launching our products, we determine the target audiences that will be prioritized in communication according to gender, age range and socio-economic status.
What measures does Saray Bisküvi take to ensure quality control and maintain production standards in its high-capacity factories in Karaman and Kırklareli?
As Saray Biscuit, we carry out our production in world standards by following environmentally sensitive technological developments and under hygienic conditions to offer the highest quality, reliable and tasty products to our consumers.
We fulfill all requirements regarding quality and food safety during all our processes from accepting material and raw material deliveries to the point of sale. We set and monitor targets for the continuous development and sustainability of our quality and food safety. We instill our food safety culture in our entire production by training our employees to understand and implement these activities better.
We work with trained and continuously improving personnel to meet customer expectations and maintain our production standards. Our primary goal in our production is to prevent all possible nonconformities at the start and to carry out complete, accurate and timely production.
Given the significant export activities to over 110 countries, what are the primary challenges Saray Bisküvi faces in its international operations, and how does the company address them?
As one of the most long-standing companies in the sector in Türkiye exporting to 110 countries, we are able to solve many problems with our vast experience, however, some of the reasons that are beyond our control can be listed as follows:
- Some country regulations (labeling, requiring additional documents / certificates of analysis from external laboratories, etc.) generate cost and time loss.
- Freight charges increased especially after Covid and this increased the costs incurred by importers and transport time increased due to regional conflicts which has resulted in decreasing the frequency of orders received during the year.
- Instability in global raw material prices and high prices increasing production costs (like the recent cocoa crisis).
- Trying to fulfill the requirements of country regulations by enduring additional costs and time loss.
- We make a “value chain” in the markets for our products to overcome reasons such as customs duties, economic conditions, etc., and proceed with products that meet the market conditions.
- We strive to offer value-added and innovative products to the markets rather than product groups where competition is fierce.
- We try to keep our brand perception high in the markets by not compromising our product quality in accordance with our company policy.
- We follow market trends closely by participating in international fairs and organizing customer trips and respond quickly to threats and opportunities in the market by implementing the necessary actions.
- We try to keep our brand awareness and market recognition high by organizing both ATL and BTL advertising and marketing activities in the markets.
In what ways does Saray Bisküvi contribute to and engage with the local communities in Karaman and Kırklareli, and how does this align with its overall corporate social responsibility (CSR) objectives?
As a company, we have established a foundation to pioneer social responsibility social services. SARAY Group fulfills its responsibilities to society in which it lives as a matter of social responsibility: University faculty building, Food Technology building, planting 2 million square meters of forest, granting scholarships, sponsoring cultural publications, orphan projects, social aid, building parks, mosques and social housing, Traffic Training Parks, etc.
Our foundation has planted 2.000.000 square meters with saplings in Karaman to generate oxygen and breathing space in the city in accordance with environmental sensitivity and turned the area into a forest. Semiha Hanımefendi Memorial Forest was deemed worthy to receive an award from the Ministry for transforming a landfill into a forest.
Geothermal energy investment and production, which has negative, almost zero minimum environmental impact, zero carbon emissions and the highest investment cost among renewable energy sources has been preferred in terms of energy investment and generation. Furthermore, as a company that believes that sustainability is a culture and that this inherent behavior can be promoted in human life starting from the family with school and social education, we continue to offer faculty, school, traffic training park, cultural publication and student scholarship services to support learning.
