In August last year the second most destructive earthquake of the 20th century hit the highly populated and industrialised area around the city of Izmit in Turkey killing 17,000 people and destroying 76,000 buildings.

Less than 50km from the destruction, in the city of Bilecik, hoist and crane manufacturing company Cesan remained unscathed. Many if its customers, however, were virtually wiped out, as factories were demolished or rendered unusable by earthquake damage.

But just as Turkey has undertaken a remarkable building programme which will see the reconstruction of an area the size of Belgium, so too has Cesan begun rebuilding and expanding its customer base and products.

Samuel Mohmed Ali, a mechanical engineer and the export manager at Cesan, says that the most immediate effect of the earthquake on the company was the shelving of its plan to build a new production plant for 100t capacity hoists. It also made the company look more towards its export markets for expansion.

“Sales in Turkey are limited and will not be enough for us,” he says.

Cesan already has ISO 9001 certification and has just started the paper work for CE marking, required for the sale of its products into the European Union. It has also begun to promote its website, which it hopes will attract overseas buyers or at least lift its profile in international markets, says Mohmed Ali. Cesan’s main export markets include Jordan, Tunisia, Oman and Saudi Arabia. The company’s plan is to build its exports to the Middle East and North Africa and then into the rest of the world.

But it is not just customers that Cesan is after, he says. “Worldwide we are looking for customers, but we are also looking for partners and distributors.” The company is open to either straightforward distribution arrangements or for manufacturing under licence.

“If we find a serious partner we can do all the manufacturing in Turkey or do business in another country,” says Mohmed Ali. One option might be to build unbranded equipment for European companies to market, he says.

Despite the setback of having to put development of the new factory on hold after the earthquake, Cesan has continued to expand its product range.

  The product range currently includes monorail and double girder cranes, hoists, goliath cranes and special lifting and transport machines with capacities between 250kg and 40t.

Except for motor drives, which are specially manufactured for Cesan in Germnay, the company makes all its own components.

The company has three overhead travelling crane ranges: the C series, the FIL series and the new generation OM series. OM1, OM2 and OM3, with capacities up to 30t, were launched last year and the 40t SWL OM4 is in development.

The OM series is designed to complement the C series which has a capacity range of 1t to 25t.

The company claims to have already sold around 1,000 units of the OM series. One of Cesan’s customers in Tunisia has purchased eight of the new OM series overhead travelling cranes, with 12 hoists, for a new textile factory which it opened in March.

  There are three main overhead crane manufacturers in Turkey, but Cesan says that it is the largest. Since it was founded in 1976, it has sold more than 10,000 hoists and 7,000 cranes, says Mohmed Ali.

The company has 120 employees, the majority of whom, about 100, work in production, assembly, management and administration at the company’s 11,000m2 factory in Bilecik.

A further 10 employees are based 240km to the north, at the erection and service department in Istanbul; and a similar number work in sales and general management at the corporate head office in Istanbul.

Cesan remains privately owned by Osman Cakmak and Mustafa Sadoglu.