Tüpraş leads Top 500 Enterprises list

ISTANBUL

Oil refiner Tüpraş once again ranked first in the Istanbul Chamber of Industry’s (İSO) Top 500 Industrial Enterprises list with production-based sales amounting to 418.4 billion Turkish Liras ($15.4 billion) last year.

Star Rafineri climbed up one notch in the list to claim the second spot with sales worth 189.2 billion liras, followed by carmaker Ford Otomotiv at 140 billion liras. Star Rafineri and Ford Otomotiv ranked third and second in the 2021 list.

Istanbul Gold Refinery climbed two spots on the list to rank forth last year with sales worth 87.8 billion liras. Steelmaker Ereğli Demir Çelik was the fifth largest industrial enterprise in Türkiye with sales at 69.5 billion liras.

The combined production-bases sales of the top 500 enterprises leaped 119 percent last year compared with 2021 to stand at 4.5 trillion liras, said Erdal Bahçıvan, the president of İSO.

“Strong export performance, vibrant domestic demand and higher export revenues thanks to higher foreign exchange rates played a role in the robust increase in sales,” he said, adding that when adjusted for inflation production-based sales of the top 500 companies grew by 33.3 percent in real terms.

Export revenues of those companies increased by 14.1 percent from 2021 to $98 billion last year when Türkiye’s overall exports stood at $254 billion, Bahçıvan noted.

Operating profit of the 500 companies rose by 96.3 percent last year from 2021 to 671 billion liras, while their combined net profit soared 121.2 percent to 485.4 billion liras.

Financing expenses of the companies were up 32.6 percent to 277 billion liras. “The ratio of financial expenses to operation profit decreased significantly from 61.1 percent in 2021 to 41.3 percent last year,” Bahçıvan said.