Structural analysis of forest products industry enterprises: Example of Kocaeli

Forest products industry involves industries which use wood as the raw material as well as the subcategories of timber, other wood products, furniture, paper-mache, paper and paper products. There are certain problems encountered in the forestry products industry just like any other industries as a result of today's technology and ever-increasing competition conditions. This study aims to identify the current situation of enterprises in wood products industry; also to analyze the encountered problems, find solutions to them and set targets for the future. The scope of the study covers enterprises working in forestry products in Kocaeli Province to that end. Participating establishments listed reasons of not operating at full capacity as lack of finance, high cost of energy, insufficient raw material. Majority of them indicated that they monitor technology closely and benefit from different R&D units and they have the target to grow as an establishment and improve their activities. Establishments asserted that, the government should increase the support and incentives mechanism and deliver seminars which will be beneficial to set examples and provide guidance to new graduates and candidate engineers about the sector and train them to solve these problems. They also specified the strength of the sector as relevance as in being needed all the time, customer orientedness, product range and high level of demand; and weaknesses as lack of qualified personnel training, difficult and costly provision of raw material, dependency of foreign sources. Keywords: Business, Forest products industry, Kocaeli, Structural analysis.