FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL

Posted On

06
October
2022

Ajax Systems launches plant in Turkey, plans to actively enter markets of North and Latin America

KYIV. Oct 6 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Security systems manufacturer Ajax Systems, which announced the opening of the first foreign plant in Turkey earlier this year, announced the start of this facility from October 1.

"We opened a plant in Turkey, on October 1. (It) started working, it starts to accelerate, and we will rebalance production 50% in Ukraine and 50% outside Ukraine," Oleksandr Konotopsky, founder and CEO of the company, said at the Forbes online conference entitled "Without Rose-Colored Glasses. Business and the State During the War" held on Thursday.

According to him, since 2014 Ajax Systems has been strategically developing in the concept of light assets to be able to "deploy anywhere in the world" in three months, and set the task of reaching parity production in Ukraine and abroad.

Konotopsky said that the company has two production facilities in Ukraine, and since the beginning of the war, relocation has been launched to places where there were no hostilities.

He said that in connection with the launch of the plant in Turkey, the company will make changes in supply chain management and production planning.

The head of Ajax Systems named the scaling of the R&D team and increasing it to 1,000 people next year to launch the production of the required number of products, as well as the active development of business in North and Latin America, which began this year, among other important tasks for this year and 2023.

Speaking about Ukraine, Konotopsky said that he looks exclusively positively at the future of the country and the future of companies in it, specifying that the head office and he personally remain in Ukraine.

The head of Ajax Systems also said that British insurance companies are beginning to insure facilities in Ukraine. "This is a big architectural shift: it will allow you to invest further, realizing that military risks are insured," he said.

In addition, Konotopsky said that the domestic market is also gradually recovering: if at the start of active hostilities in Ukraine sales were zero, then in the summer its share grew to 3-4% and now continues to recover, and by the end of the year it will be about 7%.

According to him, a high-tech company like Ajax Systems, which is not very "tied to the ground," was more influenced by global trends, for example, the depreciation of the euro or the electronic components crisis, than the fighting in Ukraine.

The founder of the company also said that he could not yet answer the question about the IPO. "Bad market," he just said.

Ajax Systems is a leading European manufacturer of professional security systems, founded in 2011. The company’s products are sold in 120 countries around the world.

In the middle of May this year, the company announced the opening of a plant in Istanbul on the area of 8,300 square meters. It will produce the entire line of Ajax devices, duplicating the existing production in Ukraine. At the first stage, the company is ready to hire at least 400 people, and plans to produce at least 150,000 devices per month.