Blue Cast: Kipas’ Halit Gümüşer on Türkiye’s Earthquake Aftermath
Blue Cast is a podcast series from the TENCEL™ Denim team. Each episode features a conversation with a special guest from within the industry or the fringes of the denim community. The following is a recap of episode 403.
In February, Türkiye suffered its worst natural disaster in its 100-year history, as a series of earthquakes struck the region around Kahramanmaras. Two of the seismic events on Feb. 6 were major earthquakes at over a 7-point magnitude. The area affected, which includes part of Syria, is larger than Germany and is home to 14 million people. Over 50,000 people lost their lives, and over 100,000 were injured.
The latest episode of our Carved in Blue podcast offers a local’s look at the situation in Türkiye today. Lenzing’s Bursa-based head of global business development denim, Tuncay Kılıçkan, chatted with Halit Gümüşer, managing director and member of the board at Kipas Denim. Kipas’ operations are centered in Kahramanmaras, and the mill has been supporting its local community with aid including shelter and supplies to help displaced individuals manage cold weather, as well as mental health initiatives for coping with trauma.
“From day one, our people, our managers and our owners, everybody altogether hand in hand, we were really working to help our society, our people,” said Halit. “Kipas, we are a local people; it is a family-owned business.”
During the conversation, Halit shared that most residents in his city are still living in tents and containers. Even if their homes were not destroyed by the quakes, they are scared to return. Getting back to work is also a challenge, as many factories collapsed and have not resumed operations. Manpower in manufacturing may also prove to be an issue, since workers left the city following the disaster.
One major local industry is textiles, and Kipas is the largest textile firm in Europe. “Kahramanmaras as a textile perspective is one of the most important cities in Europe supplying raw material, yarn, greige fabrics, and also became very important for denim manufacturing,” noted Halit.
Halit was in Amsterdam when the earthquakes hit his hometown. He has seen an outpouring of support from Amsterdam-based House of Denim and Kingpins, as well as Kipas’ fiber suppliers and customers around the globe. None of the clients canceled orders, and they worked with Kipas to move products out of its damaged warehouse to other locations. The tragedy also ushered in collaboration among competitors. Halit said peers reached out and allowed Kipas to run orders on their machines to make up for any shortages.
“Today, still we are organizing part of our production with our competitors,” said Halit. “Denim is a big world of competitive conditions, but people really support each other.”
As of now, Kipas’ spinning capacity is at about half, but it expects to have full capacity by the end of May.
Halit noted that disasters can happen anywhere—before the earthquakes, it was flooding in Pakistan. While it’s easy to forget after time has passed, he suggested keeping these in mind for how to work with each other.
“Bad things gathering people, it is the good thing of the bad things,” said Halit. “We are becoming closer, we are forgetting about all competition and everything, and we are becoming more friendly to each other.”
Listen to the episode here.