
Mustafa Badıllı (54) shares his entrepreneurial journey as the first agricultural machinery producer in Şanlıurfa. He has a degree in elementary education and founded his own business after identifying a need in the market and spending years learning the trade as an apprentice and journeyman. Mustafa Badıllı, managing a company that produces 15 thousand agricultural spraying machines a year, says that they enlarged their machine park and purchased raw materials with the loan they used via the FOSTER Project.
He says that creating Badıllı Makine ve Tarım was primarily driven by the desire to create jobs and support the national economy through production and exports. However, Badıllı claims that since they started the business, finding qualified employees has been their biggest challenge. During the Covid 19 pandemic, they also had trouble supplying raw materials because of the high cost, but as the demand for food increased, their operations sped up and they began to operate at full capacity.
The effects of the earthquake according to Badıllı, are as follows: “We had dealers in the earthquake region therefore, our business volume has decreased. Our production facilities kept operating without any damage but we lost one of our employees to the earthquake. As a result of our lack of motivation during daily operations, we fell behind in production.” In order to quickly reverse the negative effects of the earthquake, he draws attention to the financial requirements of the local businesses.
Badıllı’s goal is to “increase production capacity, establish additional production facilities, diversify export countries and increase employment”. Badıllı emphasises, “The subsidy has contributed to the purchase of raw materials and machinery,” claiming that the FOSTER Project’s long maturity and low interest rate/profit share attracted them. We anticipate that these initiatives will continue to support the growth of SMEs engaged in production and export.