Enmares Provides Turnkey Engineering Solutions in Aerospace and Defence Sector

Defence Turkey: Mr. Uçkun, firstly we would like to thank you for your time.Could you please tell us about Enmares’ history, mission and vision?

First, I would like to thank you for your kind interest in me and our company, Enmares Aviation and Defense.

Enmares was established to provide customized engineering solutions for civil aviation and aircraft maintenance industries in 2007. I had a comprehensive personnel experience in product design, system development and turnkey project management that I had acquiredduring my professional career in automotive and aircraft maintenance industries. Having seen that there are significant opportunities in aircraft maintenance sector requiring design and project management, I decided to utilize mypersonnel capabilities through a new enterprise. Our company grew rapidly over 8 years from then on and completed more than 40 genuine projects so far.

Our mid and long-term projection was to expand our activities to defense industry, which undoubtedly requires turnkey engineering system solutions including documentation. This is just what we serve and this expansion occurred spontaneously at the beginning of 2010, through a naval aviation project. We completed the first overseas project in the same year and Enmares became a product and capability exporting company. 

Our mission is to provide customized engineering solutions from scratch with all project stages, including conceptual and detailed design, manufacturing, documentation and aftersales support. Our vision is to be a worldwide respected system and technology supplier for prestigious projects.

Defence Turkey: Mr. Uçkun, what would you like to say about your engineering capabilities, personnel and facilities?

Enmares is a wide-range turnkey engineering solutions service supplier. We design and manufacture a wide variety of special equipment and systems for both civil and defense industries. Our complete scope of project implementation covers design, analysis, manufacturing, testing, documentation and aftersales support. This becomes Enmares’ distinguishing power in many aviation and defense projects for years. 

Our core team is composed ofaerospace, mechanical and shipbuilding engineers having industrial experience. This team structure enables us to carry out interdisciplinary projects without compromising required engineering methodology. Our navalaviation projects, for instance, are good examplesfor this group since they require knowledge on aviation and marine platforms in the same project. Our intermediate staff and manufacturing personnel are also an important part of Enmares ensuring the complete turnkey project implementation that I mentioned. 

We have two locations. Our head office, which accommodates management and design team is in Istanbul. We have also a manufacturing facility lying on 2000 m² in Gebze, Kocaeli. Welding, assembling, paint and delivery of our products are performed in our manufacturing facility.

Defence Turkey: Where do you position Enmares in defence and aerospace field?

We are filling an important gap in defense and aviation industry, considering the projects requiring custom system design and in-house manufacturing. Enmares is working like “short-term additional departments” from our customers’ perspectives. No matter which department that we virtually replace depending upon the current stage of the project, engineering, purchasing, manufacturing or documentation; we share our customers’ workload and help them focus their core business. Within this framework, our customers just define the mission and leave the rest of the project implementation to Enmares. This model especially fits best for interdisciplinary projects like naval helicopter platforms, in which shipyards have to fulfill aviation requirements, which are completely out of their area of specialization. 

Enmares is the only domestic company providing wide-range turnkey solutions in aviation industry. Actually, speaking both for defense and aviation industries, the term “turnkey project implementation” should be well defined since it is quite open to misinterpretation. Our project line starts from the “zero point”, which corresponds to analyzing the exact needs of our customers, even if they do not aware of what they have to do. For example, knowing only the subjected regulation for the helicopter systems of a military vessel or the aircraft type for a maintenance docking may become quite sufficient for us to determine the exact need of our customer and progress through the project.

Another important aspect that we serve is that Enmares can directly represent its customers against end-users through all stages of the project, no matter domestic or overseas. Our customers, in this way, get rid of the additional workload arising due to the information transfer from their subcontractor for review meetings or periodical project monitoring reports. Thanks to ex-military-officers in our team, we have also a good understanding to response the concerns of army officers and Undersecretariat personnel, who represent the end-user in military projects.

Defence Turkey: Could you please brief us on the activity fields of Enmares as well as the product range?

As I stated before, our main activities are positioned in defense and aircraft maintenance industries. We are designing and manufacturing a wide variety of electromechanical systems completely dependent upon our customers’ specific needs. Actually it is quite difficult for project companies of our kind to list product portfolio, since we design and manufacture different systems in different projects. Therefore I think it is more convenient to emphasize the company capabilities and give some exemplaryprojects to set the link between those capabilities and products.

On the basis I explained; we design and manufacture helicopter transfer and towing vehicles, steel or aluminum electromechanical aircraft maintenance platform systems, miscellaneous aircraft maintenance and ground support equipment, personnel safety netting systems for naval helicopter platforms, manufacturing fixtures etc. Not limited to these systems, we carry out many other complete military subsystem design and manufacturing projects.

Defence Turkey: We see that Enmares has become prominent as a company producing innovative solutions at defence and aerospace field with its engineering infrastructure and know-how. In this respect, what would you like to say on turnkey engineering packages that you offer for helicopter operations at military and civil vessels? 

Enmares is the main helicopter system and understructure subcontractor of almost all ongoing military and governmental vessel projects in Turkey. We involve the project in design stages of the vessel under consideration and work together with the design team of our customers. We undertake whole technical responsibility for that platform to be able serve for helicopter takeoff, landing, accommodation and other applicable operations like VERTREP.

Evaluation of the helicopter platform in terms of obstacles and size requirements, preparation and application of platform marking schemes, making optimum helicopter lashing pot arrangement, preparation of personnel safety netting installation diagrams, determining the optimum HVLAS (Helicopter Visual Landing Aid System) configuration and supply of all operational equipment are some of our services included in our project package.

Hereby, I would like to emphasize that we are Turkey industrial partner of 180-year-old L3-CALZONI Company, which designs and manufactures “Helicopter Visual Landing Aid Systems” as well as many specialized defense systems. We are the only HVLAS provider who gives an intensive technical support to shipyards during whole project, thanks to our powerful engineering team.

We are generating whole documentation and Integrated Logistics Support (ILS) items in-house, no matter in native tongue or English. This capability is one of the most important services especially for the military projects and provides shipyards with a great comfort.

Defence Turkey: What are the projects and collaborations executed under the scope of this program?

We were the main helicopter platform equipment subcontractor of Turkish Coast Guard S/R Vessels built by RMK Marine Shipyard and we have successfully delivered all packages for four vessels in this project. Currently, Enmares is helicopter systems main subcontractor of many ongoing projects like Logistics Support Vessels (LDG), Submarine S/R Vessel (MOSHIP), Rescue and Towing Vessels (KURYED), Seismic Research Vessel (TURKUAZ), Directorate of Coastal Safety Emergency and Rescue Vessel (NENE HATUN).In addition, we design, manufacture and supply project-based helicopter equipment for other platforms like Pakistan Navy Fleet Tanker and Tank Landing Vessels.

Enmares is carrying out many turnkey subsystems design and manufacturing for military vessels in conjunction with several shipyards.We have also many ongoing tender processes within the frame of solution partnership with our customers.

Defence Turkey: How do you perceive the export potential of your products? What would you like to say about your foreign market strategies and current activities?

We are a product and capability exporting company since 2010. Contrary to our project distribution over domestic market, we export mainly to the aviation industry. We have a contact office in Toulouse (France) with a French business development team. We are working with reputable customers like Swissair, Jet Aviation, FL Technics, Oman Air etc. Our growth in overseas markets, which reached six countries as of the first quarter of 2014, is progressing increasingly. The most important advantage for our exporting activities is our universal scope, which creates a promising potential to sell our products to almost any aviation markets in the world. Accordingly our engineering capabilities have been noted by large-scale groups like Airbus and its main sub-suppliers. We have been working on several aircraft manufacturing line solutions with some tier#1 Airbus subcontractors for a while. We think that this process is very close to turn to be a solid purchase order. 

Nevertheless our short-term goal is to expand our overseas customer portfolio to defense industry. We have already started to work on this issue and I think we will shortly initiate exporting to global defense industries.

Our other advantage, especially for export areas and overseas projects, is the ability to provide equivalent solutions with competitive prices and we will be trying to utilize in the future. By the way, we will take our place in International Helitech Exhibition in London on October, 6-8. We would be glad to host our guests in our booth. 

Defence Turkey: Could you please mention about your roadmap as Enmares on R&D investments and studies?

Our two projects were approved by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) to be considered as R&D studies and granted by governmental donations. We develop new product and approaches in almost every project. We have patenting applications. The most important concern for us is human resources that can ensure the sustainability of this growth. Therefore our vital investment item is our technical team. We have specified our priorities for R&D studies and are trying to make allocation of resources accordingly. Enmares is a very young company proceeding fast. I hope R&D studies will be one of our main driving forces in the future.

Defence Turkey: How does Enmares plan to position itself in domestic and foreign markets within the next era?

Our projection in domestic market is to become one of the main defense aviation project subcontractors in Turkey. We are working on transfer of technology for some systems through our international partners. These activities include manufacturing some parts of imported systems in Turkey under license of our international foreign partners. Also our attempts to take a part of coming defense and aviation projects will continue.

We have already reached several overseas customers on three continents. Our goal will be to develop this expansion in a stable and sustainable way.

Defence Turkey: Would you like to add some remarks for Defence Turkey readers?

Thanks very much for their valuable time that they allocated for reading this interview and Enmares Company. We will always be available through all communication means to respond their questions, remarks and concerns.