When customers become partners
Harkotek from Turkey cooperates with KEB
In order to equip machines worldwide with efficient automation and drive solutions, KEB Automation works with many international partners who have excellent industry knowledge in their respective markets. One of these is Harkotek. The company recently became a KEB partner in Turkey. From Istanbul, products from the KEB portfolio are to be made available to local plant and machine manufacturers. A simple visit to the trade fair paved the way for this partnership.
Harkotek's product range includes servo and torque motors as well as HMI panels, control technology, cloud technology and drives. The Turkish company thus offers the complete package for the operation of machines and systems – which is exactly why it is a great match for KEB. Harkotek was founded in 2016 and specialises in the sale of drive and automation components as well as project planning in the field of industrial automation. The company's focus industries include plastics, injection moulding, woodworking, extruders, packaging and printing.
Against this background, entering into a partnership with KEB Automation makes sense. But how did the collaboration come about? “Harkotek visited us at the Hannover Trade Fair in 2023,” says Wesley Tchapda, Regional Manager Export Electronics at KEB, who is also responsible for the partnership with Harkotek. “KEB was already known here because Harkotek was already buying motors from Brusatori, which is part of the KEB Group.”
Training in Barntrup, visit to Turkey
Building on the trade fair contact, the Turkish company approached KEB and suggested a partnership. “We got an overview of KEB's large product portfolio and quickly realised that we could use precisely these components in numerous projects for our customers. This led to initial discussions about a possible partnership,” says Onur Kartal, Technical Manager and Ibrahim Özdemir, Sales Manager at Harkotek. While the exchange initially took place virtually, a visit to the KEB company headquarters in Barntrup followed shortly afterwards. In addition to getting to know individual contacts, a comprehensive training session was also on the agenda in order to gain an in-depth impression of the COMBIVERT Drive Controllers in particular.
“Before we concluded the partner agreement, we visited Harkotek and its partners and customers in Turkey at the beginning of 2024. This was very informative, because the company is backed by more than 15 partners in total, who are represented at many locations in Turkey and work closely with end customers,” says Tchapda. In the future, it will be important to further intensify the exchange with the Turkish partner and to ensure that the local partners are always up to date with the latest technology through regular training. The aim is to ensure that KEB's international quality standard remains at a consistently high level.
However, it was not only the matching product range that was decisive in initiating the collaboration between the two companies. “KEB and Harkotek share similar values in terms of ensuring customer satisfaction, the availability of service, the relevance of innovation and development and the demands on component quality,” says Kartal. The partnership has now begun: Harkotek has already ordered test devices from KEB, which will be presented to customers in Turkey and jointly tested in practice.
