Growing and gaining market share quickly is one of hygiene maker Hayat Kimya’s main goals in all of its key markets. The Turkish company has demonstrated swift market growth and performance in Africa and in Asia where they plan to continue to make new investments in these regions.
With 21 production sites in six countries, Hayat Kimya prides itself on making quick decisions and acting on them in the countries where they operate. For this reason, Hayat Kimya generally does not go into partnerships when they enter new markets instead
Hayat Kimya is one of the two key businesses within the Hayat Holding portfolio, a company first started as a wholesale fabric business in Turkey in the 1930s, around the time when Turkey was beginning to industrialize. In 1967, the business started manufacturing fabrics, and in 1969, it launched the Kastamonu integrated chipboard plant. In 1987, Hayat Kimya, the business and name that is more familiar to most of us today, was founded to target fast moving consumer goods markets. Today, the company makes products in the hygiene, tissue and home care categories offering well established brands such as Bingo (laundry and home care), Molfix (baby diapers), Molped (feminine care), Papia, Familia, Focus & Teno (cleansing tissue), and Joly and Evony (adult diapers). In the baby diaper category, Hayat Kimya is ranked number five globally.
The company targets these markets through 67 subsidiaries in various industries. The company has a workforce of over 17,000 people and delivers 49 Turkish brands produced in 41 production facilities across 17 countries on five continents. In Turkey, its home ground, Hayat is ranked 45th among Turkey’s largest industrial enterprises by the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce (ISO) top 500 list. Hayat Kimya has grown rapidly in the categories in which it operates and has become a trendsetter as well as the world’s fifth largest branded baby diaper manufacturer in the world and the largest tissue manufacturer in the Middle East, the Balkans and Eastern Europe.
In an interview, Ibrahim Guler, vice president of operations at Hayat Kimya, explains that apart from being the market leader in Turkey, Algeria, Cameroon, Madagascar, and Nigeria, Molfix also ranks second in Egypt and Morocco. In Kenya, the company rose to the third place 18 months after entering the market. With the Papia and Familia brands in the sanitary tissue category, Hayat is the market leader in Turkey, Bulgaria, and Russia. The company firmly protects its second place position in Iran with its Papia and Teno brands. Hayat is the second in the market with its Test brand, which they have positioned exclusively for the Algerian market, and has taken the second spot in the same market with its Bingo brand, which is positioned in the premium class. In Bulgaria, Hayat is the leader in the fabric softener category.
Into Africa
Hayat first entered the Sub-Saharan region of Africa with the construction of a tissue and diaper factory in Nigeria, Africa’s biggest market. Located in Agbara, the plant represented a $100 million investment and, at the time of its construction, was the most technologically advanced diaper factory in the Hayat portfolio. Covering 200,000 square meters of land, the plant produces 1.3 billion baby diaper products and 13,000 tons of tissue products annually. The warehouse stores more than 40,000 pallets of goods and has 15 loading points for trucks at any given time. Owing to the power challenges in Nigeria, the factory generates its own electricity, a total of 15 megawatts.
Before investing in production in Nigeria, Hayat had focused on building demand for its products in the region. Thanks to these efforts, within two years of starting local manufacturing, Hayat achieved the top spot in the diaper market with its Molfix brand, which took the crown from Procter & Gamble’s Pampers brand.
Hayat’s strategy for Nigeria was to serve as an export hub for the rest of the ECOWAS (Economic Community Of West African States) economic bloc—including Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Cote D’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Libera, Mali, Niger, Snegal, Sierra Leone and Togo–as well as support its North African factories where necessary.
While the majority of Hayat’s African-based baby diaper and tissue sales are done within the Nigerian market, there is also a strong focus on investing in and strengthening the export potential. Within the West African sub-region, Senegal, Ghana and Cote D’Ivoire are key nonwovens markets, where Novatis Group (from Morocco) and SAH (Societe d’Articles Hygieniques) from Tunisia are strong competitors in the baby diaper market. Having successfully put up a brave competition to multinational brands like Pampers and Huggies in their own home markets, these companies have ventured out to conquer new markets in West Africa.
Hayat’s successfu entry into the Nigerian market came during a time when Nigeria’s local currency was weakening terribly versus the U.S. dollar and foreign currency was in short supply in the market. Amidst these challenges, Hayat continued to build their factory and proved to the world that they were ready for the challenge in Africa’s biggest market by GDP and by population. In 2000, Proctor and Gamble closed its Nigerian baby diaper factory, after 15 years in operation despite Pampers’ dominance in the market.
Another strategy that paid off for Hayat was entering the Nigerian market with a product that was priced higher than the leading brand, disproving the myth that lower price always wins in Africa. Instead African consumers showed that they value quality and if a brand gets the price versus quality ratio right, you will win. Pampers had offered the market a plastic backsheet product that had way outlived its time. Molfix came in with a cloth-like backsheet with better absorbency and comfort, at a slightly higher price and they took the number one spot. According to Hayat, the product was developed following discussions with Nigerian mothers.
After conquering Nigeria, Hayat has established subsidiaries in several African countries including Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria and Kenya. All of these countries are key regional nonwoven markets with competition from international global brands as well as strong local brands in the diaper and tissue markets. Still, Hayat has managed to become the number one or number two brand in a short time in all of these markets. Molfix is currently the market leader in Turkey, Algeria and Cameroon. In Nigeria, Molfix was also number one for some years, although in more recent times this is changing. The number one to three brands in Nigeria are now in fact brands owned by Chinese companies.
In Kenya, Molfix rose to one of the top three brands just 18 months after entering the market.
At the peak of the COVID pandemic, Hayat applied their 33 years of experience in the field of hygiene to the surgical face mask category with the Evony brand. With an investment of more than 100 million TRY (US$18 million), the company entered the market as the world's largest Turkish manufacturer of surgical face masks, with an annual production capacity of six billion pieces and a daily production capacity of 16 million pieces, at a time when the national and global demand far outstripped supply. In 2021 the total number of people employed in Hayat’s surgical face mask facility was close to 600.
Hayat manufactured the non-woven fabric, which is one of the most important raw materials used in surgical face masks, within their own facility. They are the only surgical mask manufacturer that manufactures their own raw materials. Inspired by the raw material technology that they use in Molfix, which does not irritate the baby's skin, they developed elastic ear straps for Evony that do not hurt the ears. They also worked on special designs for children and adults. With such production capacity at their disposal, Hayat honored orders to deliver a significant amount of the much needed surgical face masks to the world.
Commenting on the fully integrated nonwovens business that is Hayat and noting that they obtained 60% of their turnover from foreign investments, İbrahim Güler, vice president, operations, Hayat continued, “Our primary goal is to continue to be a world-class player and maintain the competitiveness brought by our agility. Our understanding of quality, our passion for innovations, our entrepreneurial spirit and courage have always returned us successful business results. We will continue to work with an investment and export-oriented vision, believing that everyone has the right to access quality and innovative products. We will continue our sustainable growth in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.”
