Impregnation industry in Turkey, present situation, problems and solution proposals

In this study, the number of enterprises operating in wood impregnation industry in Turkey, their production capacities, capacity utilization rates, production systems, foreign trade and employment situations are investigated. For this purpose, enterprises operating in only pressure wood impregnation (Group-A) and enterprises need pressure wood impregnation systems while operating in different fields such as timber production or decoration (Group-B) are included within the scope of this study. Also, required information about firms that supply raw materials and about enterprises establishing wood impregnation systems were collected, and the problems of the accessed enterprises were obtained. To determine the problems and the present situation, a survey was applied to the firms. The problems and the present situation were explicated using SWOT analysis and solutions are proposed. Consequently, 56 of total 73 enterprises were shared their information with us by attending to the survey. 22 of these 56 enterprises were Group-A and the remaining 34 were Group-B. It was observed that most of the enterprises in Group-A (36%) were established in Mediterranean Region, and most of the enterprises in Group-B (38%) were established in Aegean Region. Also, it was seen that capacities were 142 800 m³ / year and 133 500 m³ / year for the Group-A and Group-B, respectively (totally 276 300 m³ / year). However, it was seen that these enterprises do not work at full-capacity, and lack of demand was assigned as a reason. Marketing, employment, material procurement for wood impregnation were also among their problems. It was suggested that, all the enterprises operating in this field should be up to TSE (Turkish Standards). Moreover, a federation was found to be nesessary for these firms? internal auditing.