The purpose of establishing SEKA, which has undertaken paper production on behalf of the state for years, was not only to produce paper but also to produce the pulp. However, in the early 2000s, the state exited the Paper Production sector by privatization or closing its production facilities.A SEKA's facility, which was opened in 1970 and had an annual production capacity of 60,000 tons of the pulp and 60,000 tons of paper in Çaycuma, was also privatized in 2003 and only this pulp production facility it was able to continue its production in the private sector.
It is known that SEKA came to the fore with financial losses during the years it was in production activity, especially from the 1990s until it was closed down by privatization. Mathematically, financial loss-making means that sales prices are lower than cost prices. Why was SEKA a financial loss-making state institution and why did the private sector not establish a pulp production facilities while establishing very large capacity paper production facilities after SEKA in Turkey? Although there are thoughts of establishing a pulp production facility in the private sector these days, if this investment is undertaken without examining the example of SEKA, the largest producer in the past, similar problems may occur again.
As it is known, the main raw material of the pulp production is wood, and in Turkey, the management and ownership of forest areas and the evaluation of forest products are left to the Treasury by the Constitution, and these rights are used together with forest villagers as defined in the laws. The control of the wood raw material received during the SEKA period was not in the desired structure; An attempt was made to produce products using a called wood incoming raw materials during SEKA's life period. For this reason, the efficiency data in the pulp production from wood were low and it was condemned to make the financial losses due to high production costs. The main principle of the pulp production technology is to take the lignin and similar structure in wood into the liquid phase by the extraction method and leave the desired pulp as a product in the solid phase.Since extraction is done with chemicals under high temperature and pressure, the use of wood cut at the same age is important for efficiency. By optimizing the production parameters such as temperature, pressure and chemical use with the use of chips obtained from trees cut at the same age, it is possible to work at high production efficiency. Otherwise, since the behavior of a raw material consisting of a mixture of very young and very old trees towards chemicals under pressure and temperature is different, there is a serious decrease in the amount of the pulp content in the solid phase product.
Therefore, before establishing a pulp production facility in Turkey, it is important to make the necessary arrangements to ensure control in the supply of trees that will be raw materials. This can be achieved by regulating forest property rights.
In these regulations, different structures stand out in applications around the world;
-Sale of forest property to industrial companies,
-Sale of forest property to developer companies,
-Leasing of forest area to companies or developer companies,
-Allocation of forest area to companies,
As in many countries, the operator and owner of forest assets in Turkey is the state. Therefore, in order to initiate the above practices, it is necessary to regulate forest property rights. In Turkey, the management and ownership of forest areas and the evaluation of forest products are left to the Treasury by the Constitution, and these rights are exercised together with forest villagers as defined in the law.
As long as the management of forest areas is carried out without taking into account the demands of the pulp producing facilities, the problems experienced by companies that will establish new pulp production will be similar to the problems that lasted until the closure of SEKA, and they will not be able to compete with the competitive conditions of selling the pulp products in the market.
Another important issue is the investment financing of the establishment of a high-capacity pulp production facility. It is anticipated that the investment cost of a large-scale pulp production facility to be established considering the need in Turkey will exceed 2 billion €. Considering that a lot of chemicals are used in the pulp production technology, it is also important to take into account the importance of eliminating elements that negatively affect the environment during the installation phase.
Unless the above-mentioned issues are taken into consideration, it will be able to be assumed that the life cycle of a newly established pulp production facility will not be as long as expected.
0 Yorum