From a tiny workshop to a global steel giant

At six years old, Fuat Tosyalı began working in his family’s nine-square-meter workshop. Today, the business stretches across nine million square meters, with more than 50 facilities on three continents, making it one of the world’s largest steel producers.

Tosyalı recalled that the family worked around the clock and produced about 70 stove pipes a day. The scale is radically different now: he says the company produces around 5,000 meters of pipe every minute, including advanced steel pipes for a 105-kilometer project on Germany’s Rhine River.

The company also makes thin steel sheets used in household appliances, car bodies, soda cans and food cans. Tosyalı described how he used to rush to the workshop in his school uniform, helping his father and recording accounts in a notebook. He and his three brothers worked with their father in the small shop for 20 years, and he says they are still working.

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I remember vaguely. I know that I started working at the workplace when I was six.

The article’s account of the İskenderun complex emphasizes how far the operation has moved from the grimy image often associated with steel plants. The 2.5-billion-dollar facility includes a modern central building with open, oval interiors, circular employee floors, pastel furnishings and an art exhibition. Students from İskenderun’s schools have visited the exhibition.

Tosyalı also recalled travelling to Istanbul from the age of 10 to buy supplies for the shop. The journey took 23 or 24 hours, and because the family could not use banks at the time, they fastened their money inside their jacket pockets with safety pins.

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If I was in the morning school shift, I would immediately go to the shop in my school uniform to help my father and write down the accounts in the notebook.