Posted by meb at April 16th, 2008

Bosch, one of the world’s leading firms operating in automotive, industrial and building technologies as well as consumer goods aims for further expansion in the Turkish market. The company announced its 2007 results and 2008 expectations in Istanbul yesterday.

“Last year was a year of records for Bosch in Turkey,” said Hermann Butz, CEO of Bosch Sanayi&Ticaret. “Bosch Group Turkey’s average growth rate was 17 percent within the last five years. We aim to continue our performance by growing 15 percent this year.”

Bosch Turkey’s aggregate turnover was 1.6 billion euros with a 17 percent increase in 2007. The company’s carrier business segment was automotive technologies, constituting 55 percent of the turnover, while the share of consumer goods technologies was 37 percent. Industry technologies constituted 8 percent of total turnover. “We should be improving in the industry technologies segment,” said Butz.

Rising investment:

“Bosch invested 700 million euros in Turkey within the last five years,” he said. “The investment in 2007 alone was 150 million euros. We aim to increase this amount in 2008 as much as we can.”  The company’s research and development expenditure was 37 million euros last year.

Bosch Turkey’s exports totaled 1 billion euros in 2007, growing 23 percent compared to the previous year. “We are looking forward to increasing our export rate to 1.1 billion euros in this year with 10 percent growth,” Butz said.

Bosch Sanayi ve Ticaret, a subsidiary of Bosch Group Turkey, operates in production, product development and sales and marketing, with a turnover of 806 million euros, which grew 25 percent in 2007.

“Exports, which constituted 670 million euros of our turnover last year, is a key figure in our business portfolio,” said Butz. “We aim to raise our turnover to 900 million euros in 2008, as well as increasing our export volume to 700 million euros. We plan to invest 100 million euros as Bosch Sanayi ve Ticaret in Turkey.”

Responding a question, political and financial stability is a crucial issue, he said. “We have a long-term perspective in Turkey. We are confident of Turkey and we will continue to invest here,” he added.

Source: Turkish Daily News