• collaboration with authorities, specialized organizations and our business and institutional partners.
• alignment with regional plans.

Our commitment is usually long-term, to create or save jobs in a wide range of sectors unrelated to our own businesses and operations.

In the last ten years, Total Regional Development has helped in France 1,000 businesses with loans totaling €70 million. Some 15,000 jobs have been created, saved or planned thanks to current loans.

We support Small and Medium-Sized businesses in three ways.

Loan recipients are mainly entrepreneurs, businesses in operation for less than five years, acquirers and companies in the first year following a buy-out.
Loans are interest-free and unsecured. Total Regional Development acts in accordance with two principles: partnering with local stakeholders that coach and support new entrepreneurs and providing financial assistance, picking up where banks leave off.

We leverage our presence in 130 countries, extensive knowledge of local stakeholders and real-world experience to help Small and Medium-Sized French businesses expand into international markets. In the last two years, nearly 500 companies have received coaching and support from Total Regional Development.



Our support takes different forms :

• Brokering contacts and sharing information. To help small businesses prospect export markets, our subsidiaries in those countries provide expertise and local contacts.
• Arranging commercial prospecting missions, mostly in partnership with the national or regional organizations that promote international development for French companies.
• Hosting co-op interns on behalf of small businesses, to facilitate their international prospecting.

A driving force in industrial innovation worldwide, Total has introduced a financial aid programme, in partnership with major French national and regional organisations, to promote SME growth and industrial developments in specific fields of interest to the Total Group.

Total hopes that this programme will promote innovation and help SMEs to adapt to the market's economic and technical changes.

Who will benefit from this new Innovation Aid programme?

SSMEs or SME clusters that have developed a high-potential innovative project in a field of interest to the TOTAL Group. This programme covers innovations in 11 key fields defined by the Group’s Scientific Division and 11 fields defined by its Technology Committee network. These could concern, for example, biomass, solar energy, specialty chemicals, new mechanical materials, etc

How does it work?

It is based on the principle of risk sharing and project management support.

This partnership provides SMEs with cash flow during the critical product development phase, following initial R&D. The anticipated result will be to increase the number of successful innovative projects on a technical and commercial level and this in turn will accelerate growth and create employment.