Tofaş Bursa most productive Fiat Chrysler facility

Tofaş's Bursa factory, with 383,000 cars rolling out of its production line last year, has become Fiat Chrysler Automobile's (FCA) largest production facility in the world. It surpassed the groups other 69 factories around the world in number of cars produced.

The factory, producing at almost full capacity, was previously ranked 14th in 2014, when it was producing at 50 percent of its installed capacity. Tofaş factory was followed by the factory in Melfi, Italy.

Tofaş CEO Cengiz Eroldu said, "Tofaş was ranked 14th among FCA's production facilities in 2014, became eighth in 2015, and made a breakthrough to take the first place in 2016. The facility produced 1,566 cars on a daily basis and 40,000 cars every month to reach unprecedented production figures in the Turkish automotive industry."

"We closed the year 2016 with the production of 383,000 cars - which is a record in the automotive industry and we actualized one-quarter of the Turkish automotive industry's production and exports. We exported 280,000 cars, which is a record number in terms of our country's automotive sector," Eroldu said.

Underlining that Fiat "Egea" played an important role in the success of FCA sales, Eroldu said that a total of 100,000 Egea/Tipo cars were sold in Europe in 2016.

Referring to the FCA's announcement of the 2016 sales figures, last week, Eroldu said Fiat's sales in Europe have soared by 11 percent compared to 2016. Attributing this rise to the Egea/Tipo family, Eroldu noted that the share of the FCA in the European car market rose to 6.5 percent in 2016 from 6.1 percent in 2015.

The Tofaş CEO added that the company has become more foreign market-oriented with its exports and claimed that Europe's automotive market was returning to its old days.

"So, exports will constitute 70 percent of our business and we are less sensitive to developments in the domestic market," he concluded.