Serif Aktürk came to the Netherlands in 1992 via Germany from Turkey, in search of a better life. He worked as a cleaner until a friend suggested making white cheese. Initially, he conquered the “ethnic market,” but today the dairy products of Özgazi Dairy Foods are found on shelves all around the world. His sons, Adem and Numan Aktürk, are expanding their father’s company. “He started with nothing. We have the luxury of being able to focus on the rest of the market.”
In one of the factory halls of Özgazi Dairy Foods, a robot wraps a pallet of dairy products in plastic. A little further along, a steel arm seals tins until they contain a kilo of white cheese.
“I think you’re in one of the most modern factories in the world,” says Numan Aktürk (34). “Automation allows us to keep production costs low. We’re getting close to realizing dad’s dream goal: processing one million liters of milk per day.”
Engineer
The story of the Özgazi family reads like a fairy tale. But it wasn’t always easy. Father Serif Aktürk traveled to Germany in 1978 from Turkey in search of a better life. With some savings, he enrolled at the Technical University of Aachen to study mechanical engineering. To fund his studies, he cleaned buildings and delivered newspapers. He also had his first son, Adem.
After ten years of hard work, Serif earned his degree and became an engineer. But that didn’t mean a secure future. “I read books about how to write a job application letter in Dutch,” Serif recalls at a long meeting table on the first floor of the office in Etten-Leur. “I sent out twenty applications. Four rejections came back; the rest never responded.”
Making good money
Without a decent job opportunity, Serif started his own cleaning company. By then, he had also become father to another son—Numan. Serif cleaned office buildings. But one day, his life changed. “I met a man from the same region in Eastern Turkey as I am,” says Serif. “At a nearby farm in Sliedrecht, he had bought milk for twenty cents per liter and wanted to make cheese from it in his backyard, using buckets and a weight to press out the whey. From forty liters of milk, he could make eight kilos of cheese, which he could sell for sixty guilders. He asked me: shall we make a lot more cheese together? And I thought: that sounds like good money.”
Serif had saved nearly 40,000 guilders and went with his new partner to the bank. Eventually, he received a loan of 250,000 guilders. With that money, he bought his first cheese-making machines. In 1992, he rented a 400-square-meter factory space in Sliedrecht, and by 1995 he had grown so rapidly that he needed more than twice that space. He found it in Etten-Leur. Özgazi Dairy Foods was born.
Dad remains the genius
Serif started making white cheese—technically feta, but that name is reserved for cheese of Greek origin. At first, he mainly sold to what Numan calls the “ethnic market” in Europe—mainly customers from Turkey and the Balkans. Now, Özgazi Dairy Foods generates an annual revenue of €150 million, and in addition to white cheese, a wide range of dairy products is sold in supermarkets worldwide.
Brothers Adem (37) and Numan always knew they would one day take over their father’s factory. They earned (master’s) degrees in retail management and commercial economics and officially joined the company three years ago. Adem focuses on sales and product development; Numan manages finances. “But dad remains the genius,” says Numan. “He laid a solid foundation. Now it’s up to us to expand on it.”
A different mindset
Adem and Numan have a different mindset than their father. Adem: “Dad comes from literally nothing. We have the luxury of focusing on market opportunities.” Recently, the brothers commissioned a machine to produce kashkaval, a hard pizza cheese. This should push the company past the one-million-liter-a-day mark. For the past two years, the production of Greek- and Turkish-style yogurt has further boosted revenue.
Adem: “Soon we’ll be producing more yogurt than cheese.” Fifteen years ago, Serif opened a factory in Rucphen to manufacture tin packaging. And on Numan’s initiative, the company is working on a plastic injection molding facility in Tholen for yogurt containers. This also brought cost savings.
Third child
Serif doesn’t always agree with everything his sons decide, he says. There are sometimes heated discussions at the table. “Because he’s quite authoritarian,” Adem says, describing his father. But Serif has come to the point where he dares to spend seven months a year in Turkey, keeping one eye on his laptop screen to track the results.
Just before his departure, tension in the family always rises a bit. “Then he wants to leave everything in perfect order,” Numan says. “Makes sense. The factory is his third child.”
Source: https://raboenco.rabobank.nl/nl/juli_2025/3467/oud-en-nieuw/
