Norm Fasteners has proved itself willing to invest in order to progress as a company. CEO Mahmut Öztürk discusses strategy, diversification, the importance of R&D and digitalisation.
Headquartered in Türkiye, Norm Fasteners is a significant global fastener manufacturer, with a global presence that includes 15 sales and logistics centres.
Through its wide network of 110 suppliers across 14 countries, its supplies fasteners beyond its production range and offers tailored solutions from design to production as a Full Service Provider, focusing on complexity reduction, total value and C-Parts management to optimise efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
Norm Fasteners is a keen investor in innovation, regularly sharing details of new projects and milestone innovations. One worth pointing out is the recent announcement of what it believes is an industry first, implementing SAP PP/DS in cold forming production. SAP PP/DS enables manufacturers to create optimised schedules by considering capacity constraints and real-time operational needs. Fully integrated with SAP S/4HANA, the system supports order-based production, enhances on-time delivery and significantly boosts planning accuracy and efficiency.
And at the end of 2024, Norm Fasteners introduced "A Profile Fastener", a solution developed by its own R&D and engineering teams. The groundbreaking fastener has a unique design designed to revolutionise the assembly process by enabling fast, low-torque threading without causing deformation in wood or metal plates, ensuring maximum safety through precise centring and fixation during installation.
Torque Magazine caught up with Mahmut Öztürk, Norm Fasteners CEO, in March to discuss the global economy as well as investments in R&D, the global economy, digitalisation and sizeable investments.
What's the mood of the industry currently?
Obviously, things are quite flat with the economy generally in Europe and there's much uncertainty in the world at the moment. We have some challenges in Türkiye, there are lots of uncertainties with tariffs globally. Tariffs are one of the topics our clients are discussing with us. They are not easy for businesses. For us, we would like to focus on different markets, such as North Africa, the United States as it is still one of the biggest markets and Europe.
We would like to deepen our relationships with our current customers and develop our business. And also we are looking for new business with new clients - we now have a business development team working on that. We are looking to develop into new industries too, such as agriculture, construction and solar energy. Norm is very strong in automotive, and white goods and appliances, and those are some of our core markets. But our intention is to diversify in terms of customers and industries.
You recently launched 'a Profile Fastener' developed by your in-house R&D team. That area seems to be a big emphasis for Norm Fasteners?
We have a very strong team in our R&D department, and this is an area that we are focusing on heavily. We are developing new products, new processes and working with new materials. R&D is an important tool for us to develop business with our customers. We want to be the solution partner for our customers and we would like to solve their pain points. A Profile Fastener is part of that offering, something we created to answer the needs of one of our customers. So far, we have really had positive feedback and this is motivating us to develop this product further in the future.
Have you undertaken any other key investments?
We actually invested in solar technology and built a new solar farm. It is almost 32MW in capacity, so it's huge. Thanks to this new investment, we're able to produce 60% of our energy needs by ourselves, which is quite important. This supports our sustainability goals as well.
This year we are also building a new production plant for our stamping business unit. We produce washers ourselves and our company is moving to a new production facility in the following months. There is a new hot forging plant being developed too. Those are some of the latest investments.
Last year, we moved into a new warehouse in Michigan. Lansing in the United States. It's a big warehouse which will help us meet our customer demands easily. We would like to strengthen our supply chain as well, this might mean investing in manufacturing in the US. We are really focusing on that strategy in the US as it is a market we want to develop.
CBAM is obviously a big topic. How is Norm Fasteners working towards sustainability goals?
We have been researching and working on the topic for five years. In the last three years, we published what we have achieved in our sustainability work so far, measuring our carbon footprint. In 2030, we are going to have reduced our carbon footprint by 50% and in 2050 we are going to be carbon neutral. So, we have solid goals. They are challenging, but our team are working very hard to reach these goals. They take this issue very seriously, as does our board of directors. We are making serious investments, not just with solar panels but including changing all the furnaces we use within this strategy.
That sounds like a big investment…
Yes, but we have to do it to ensure we become more sustainable and are working within the CBAM framework. It's a challenge, but also a serious opportunity as well.
What other big issues and challenges are there at the moment?
Digitalisation is a big topic and we have some sizeable projects underway. We have teams working on different areas and more than 20 people working heavily on AI projects, mostly employees in engineering but also on the shop floor. It's a really important area. We also have some projects on RPA (Robotic Process Automation), which will be a very competitive tool for us. These are some of the main topics which we are focusing on right now.
