Oil refiner TÜPRAŞ ranked first on the Istanbul Chamber of Industry’s (İSO) Top 500 Industrial Enterprises 2022 list with production-based sales worth TL 418.4 billion ($15.3 billion), retaining its position as the country’s largest company.
The list was announced by İSO Chairman Erdal Bahçıvan during a press conference on Tuesday.
According to the research, Star Refinery, which was in third place in 2021, rose to second place with TL 189.2 billion ($6.9 billion) in sales, while carmaker Ford Otomotiv, which held the second position last year, ranked third with sales of TL 140.1 billion ($5.1 billion).
Bahçıvan stated that the operating profit of the top 500 industrial enterprises increased by 96 percent to TL 671 billion ($24.6 billion) in 2022. He added that, in contrast, the operating margin decreased from 14.8 percent to 12.8 percent.
Recalling that Turkey’s exports surpassed $254 billion in 2022, marking a 12.9 percent increase compared to a year earlier, he stated that the exports of the top 500 industrial enterprises, according to the İSO list, approached nearly $98 billion, with 14.1 percent growth in the same period.
TÜPRAŞ, along with Türk Telekom and PETKİM, is among the key enterprises that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) has privatized. Turkey’s largest company was privatized and became part of a Koç Holding-led consortium despite objections by opposition politicians and Petrol-İş, the Petroleum, Chemical and Rubber Workers Union, in 2006, four years after the AKP came to power.
According to data from the Ministry of Treasury and Finance’s Privatization Administration (ÖİB), the state-owned shares of nearly 400 private companies were sold between 1986 and 2019, with $39 billion of the $46 billion in sales taking place under AKP rule.