European Commission’s Joint Research Center announced ‘The 2016 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard’, published annually since 2004.

Tofas, a joint venture between Turkey’s Koç Holding and Italy’s Fiat Chrysler, has been named Turkey’s largest research and development investor by European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) among 2,500 companies on the global list by the European Commission’s Joint Research Center called ‘The 2016 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard’.

Tofas has been ranked 547th with 182,5 million Euros of R&D investment after it climbed up 27 places compared to a previous year’s list. Tofas has become the best of six companies from Turkey that are on the list.

Tofas CEO Cengiz Eroldu said the company had invested heavily in the R&D sector for years. “Not only Tofaş, but the entire Turkish automotive sector has reaped the yields of these investments. With our Fiat Egea project, we have offered competitiveness advantage globally,” he said.

Tofaş has started producing a new Fiat Sedan model, dubbed Fiat Egea, in Bursa/ Turkey in September 2015.

The 2016 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard relies on economic and financial information on the World’s top 2500 companies that invested €696 billion in R&D –representing about 90% of the total expenditure on R&D financed by the business sector worldwide. The 2016 Scoreboard sample comprises companies based in the EU (590 companies), the US (837 companies), Japan (356 companies), China (327 companies), Taiwan (111 companies), South Korea (75 companies), Switzerland (58 companies) and further 20 countries.

Source: Hürriyet Daily News/ European Commission Joint Research Centre ‘The 2016 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard’