A hot spot of Turkish industry is located around 20 kilo­me­ters to the north east of Izmir. In the huge indus­trial zone of Manisa, Emas Makina Sanayi A.Ş. (emas) and over 150 other compa­nies manu­fac­ture their prod­ucts. emas is the biggest condensing boiler manu­fac­turer in Turkey and with its ECA brand, has also been a leader in the heating and cooling system market since 1985. And emas is now going inter­na­tional: China, Russia, the Middle East, Greece, Germany, and Great Britain. Inno­va­tions are a key driver of the expan­sion. At emas, Fikri Neğiş, the head of research and devel­op­ment, is respon­sible for this effort.

What role does sustain­ability play for you ?

It is very impor­tant to me to act sustain­ably. That was one of the reasons I decided to work at emas. For me person­ally, the company’s values are an impor­tant guide and for both me and my colleagues, they are an inspiring goal.

Fikri Neğiş received his engi­neering degree from Middle East Tech­nical Univer­sity, one of the top univer­si­ties in Turkey. His master’s thesis was about mate­rial sciences and energy storage. Neğiş’ entry-level posi­tion in the auto­mo­tive industry led to a job in heating tech­nology. (Photo | Kerem Uzel)

What are your company’s values ?

Social respon­si­bility is one of the two key values at emas. Our inter­pre­ta­tion of this is: conserving natural resources and treating the envi­ron­ment with respect. Sustain­ability is in our genes. This is why at emas, we also support direc­tives whose goal is to reduce energy consump­tion or emis­sions. We believe in contin­uous improve­ment of the envi­ron­ment and the contri­bu­tion to real­izing this goal made by highly effi­cient prod­ucts.

Recently, you had to deal with imple­menting a direc­tive like that.

To success­fully enter the market in the Euro­pean Union, Turkey adopted its rules and regu­la­tions early on — including the Ecode­sign direc­tive. It has applied to instan­ta­neous water heaters in Turkey since January 2018. But we are not worried about imple­menting it, since energy effi­ciency has played an impor­tant role at emas for a long time.

How exactly did you imple­ment the direc­tive ?

We concen­trated on two topics when imple­menting the ErP Direc­tive: tech­nical imple­men­ta­tion and plan­ning. The tech­nical side primarily involved deter­mining our effi­ciency classes. At the first step, we changed all the circu­la­tion pumps in the boilers to the high effi­ciency pumps according to ERP lot 11. As a second step, we phased out our non-condensing combi boilers according to ERP lot 1. Then, we provided the printed labels, inside pack­aging of condensing boilers and gas water heaters, to end users and the docu­ment version to all customers on the Internet. At the same time, we enabled the online calcu­la­tion program of heating systems with addi­tional heat sources or acces­sories to deter­mine package system effi­ciency (boiler+controller+solar system+additional heat sources) and to create a label for the package system.

Fikri Neğiş worked as an expa­triate in Portugal for three years. (Photo | Kerem Uzel)

After 16 years, he began working at emas. (Photo | Kerem Uzel)

Currently, he heads a 29-person R&D team. (Photo | Kerem Uzel)

We still haven’t talked about the second value …

It requires 100% customer orien­ta­tion. To us, concen­trating on customers means recog­nizing their expec­ta­tions — and meeting them with inno­v­a­tive prod­ucts that deliver more than antic­i­pated. Currently, we are working to expand our range of high-quality prod­ucts, for example. Customer demand in this segment is high.

Could you mention a few exam­ples ?

The newest prod­ucts in the ECA port­folio are Proteus Premix and Felis. The first one is a condensing boiler in the output range of 24 to 35 kW. Felis is a central high-perfor­mance condensing boiler from 65 to 150 kW. By the way, we rely on gas blowers from ebm-papst in both boilers. These high-perfor­mance compo­nents support our effort to contin­u­ously raise our prod­ucts’ effi­ciency. And our customers warmly welcome Proteus Premix due to its low noise gener­a­tion. We are convinced that the gas blower plays an impor­tant role in noise reduc­tion.

“We at emas support direc­tives whose goal is to reduce energy consump­tion or emis­sions.”
Fikri Neğiş, Head of research and devel­op­ment at EMAS

Why did you decide to go with ebm-papst ?

We have been working closely with ebm-papst since 2004. Several factors played a role in our choice. First, we knew that ebm-papst has a repu­ta­tion for high quality and reli­able compo­nents. Second, ebm-papst also follows a sustain­able corpo­rate philos­ophy that matches our convic­tions. In our daily collab­o­ra­tion, we expe­ri­ence fast, trans­parent answers to our ques­tions and require­ments. For example, when we had a ques­tion about quality that was only indi­rectly related to ebm-papst, our colleagues there reacted quickly and provided useful support. We were very impressed.

Do you also use new compo­nents from ebm-papst in your pioneering, inno­v­a­tive prod­ucts ?

We test all compo­nents for perfect func­tion and satis­fac­tory service life in their appli­ca­tions. Over the years we have had very good results with the gas blowers from ebm-papst. That is why we are always ready to use further devel­op­ment or inno­v­a­tive prod­ucts: they fulfill our mission of exceeding expec­ta­tions. After all, top quality and inno­va­tion are our main focus.