Insight

A review and preview of the global fastener market

Named after the Roman god who is often depicted as having two faces – due to its ability to look to the future and to the past – the Janus Perspective is a unique feature that includes a wide cross section of global fastener business leaders, who have all contributed their retrospective of 2021 and thoughts on prospects and challenges for 2022.

Fatíh Uysal, chairperson

The Covid-19 virus has impacted sectors and businesses around the world and it is still influencing society and markets. As a business we continue to navigate our way through this difficult situation with clear and quick thinking to enable us to meet the challenges of the industry.

During this period, we focused on our sustainability-oriented investments and developing projects that create value for our business partners without impacting day-to-day business. Against all odds of global inflation, the semiconductor chip crisis affecting our industry, and particulaly in respect of burdensome procurement processes and increasing commodity prices, we continued to open new doors in Turkey and abroad.

With the strategic alliances we have established, we are on our way to becoming one of the world’s five largest suppliers of fasteners. In September, we signed one of the major supply agreements for the Turkish industry with Ford Otosan and took the first steps of a collaboration that will last ten years.  By providing R&D, design, engineering, production, sourcing and supply chain management services to Ford Otosan, as a result of our collaboration, we have earned the title of a Full Service Provider (FSP). As the first local company to receive this title in Turkey, we will continue our efforts to become a service supplier and business partner with the world’s leading automotive companies – that shape the future of the automotive industry.

Amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, NORM Holding prioritised in its agenda the need to provide innovative support to our business partners together with research and development of new technologies that facilitate the performance of our team.  While multi sourcing and intensifying cooperation with our suppliers and customers all over the world, we concentrated our focus on emergency response scenarios, business sustainability management, preparation of quality and performance improvement programmes for suppliers, as well as increasing the level of automation-based operations.

We have not compromised our vision and strategy for 2025. With these in perspective, we established two new companies last month. Today’s rapidly evolving manufacturing technologies mean all players must rise to the challenge. For instance, additive manufacturing technology is a major trend in the industry and is becoming an indispensable method in the manufacturing of value-added products. At NORM Holding we see this as an opportunity to invest in this production infrastructure and integrate it to our production expertise. For this purpose, we established Norm Additive, a new group company that will provide services not only in the automotive industry, but in a wide range of industries such as aviation, white goods, defence, as well as medical technologies and supplies – both in Turkey and abroad.  In contrast to traditional manufacturing technologies, we aim to provide cost and time effective modalities in terms of both engineering and production support for our customers in order to reduce weight and increase performance in their structural parts.  Prototyping and mass production services will also be offered through our additive manufacturing systems. Under these changing prerequisites, 316L stainless steel and AlSi10Mg aluminium alloys will be available in our systems for our customers in the automotive industry.

In addition, based on the years of accumulated knowledge, experience, production, as well as R&D and engineering competencies in cold forging, plus the needs of our customers, we established NORM Forging, a new company by NORM Holding. Our new enterprise will help to diversify our product portfolio with hot forged special parts and enable us to continue to create value for our customers, as well as position us as a solution partner through a zero defect philosophy; customer satisfaction-oriented production; and end-to-end supply chain solutions.

Our main goals for 2022 will be to continuously increase our quality standards, and customer satisfaction, and to strengthen our business practices to establish sustainability in each phase of our operations.  As such, while we continue our efforts to be a mindful business partner for our customers, we will also move forward in-line with the main strategies of our organisation in environmental, economic and social issues. 

In 2022 and 2023 we plan to invest in business ventures and operations in Turkey and abroad totaling €110 million. Our target is to reach a consolidated turnover of €500 million in 2025, while we maintain our export growth target as 50%. Our logistics and marketing company in the USA will be our gateway to one of the markets enabling us to grow the fastest. Moreover, we expect rapid growth in Poland, Romania, and Germany, and we aim to further increase our business operations abroad in the upcoming period in respect to proximity to consumers, the supply of skilled labour and ecosystem synergies.

We see sustainability as providing for the present needs without compromising the needs of the future generations – based on issues, economics, environmental and social development. Therefore, we strive to create value for our world and community. From installing solar panels in our manufacturing facilities to measuring our corporate carbon footprint; from transitioning to sandblasting techniques to our digital transformation; all our actions are thoroughly planned to create a better future and a more sustainable world. 

In 2021 we focused on sustainability of our business practices and took it on our corporate agenda to publish an annual Sustainability Report – starting from this year. We made an assessment of our business – both the operational and commercial processes in NORM Holding, as well as our group companies – from a sustainability perspective and we embarked to bring solutions on issues that could directly affect the manufacturers in the near future, such as the EU Green Deal and Carbon Border Adjustment. As NORM Holding, we strongly support weight reduction efforts especially in the automotive industry, not only to increase vehicle performance but in consideration of environmental and economic reasons.

That is why we concentrate our efforts to provide innovative solutions for the needs and demands of the industry. As a result of our R&D activities carried out in this context, we have developed innovative designs that provide significant reductions in the weight of fasteners, depending on design and metric, without compromising mechanical performance. We have also filed a total of nine local and international patent applications and six industrial design applications, one of which is international, for the innovative designs that emerged as a result of the weight reduction studies carried out so far.

As a result of weight reduction R&D activities on hexagon head bolts, which are widely used in the automotive industry, we have produced innovative products in different forms under the Hexlight® brand. A significant weight reduction was achieved in Hexlight products, which meet the mechanical requirements specified in the standards and mean the products can be used without any change in assembly conditions. Starting with the automotive industry, weight reduction has become an increasingly significant matter in other industries. We are closely following the latest technological developments, demands and needs of the industry, as well as advancing research and development studies on this matter with an increasing momentum every day.