The Turkish citrus season is in full swing, and it seems to be a rather better season than the last one, says Coskun Eren, marketing manager for Turkish fresh produce exporter Eren: “We normally started our season around mid-September with the Meyer lemons. Nowadays, Meyer is still on the shelf, but we are continuing the Interdonato lemons, Star Ruby and Rio Red grapefruits, Dobeshi Beni and Satsuma mandarins as well as Navelina oranges. After a very hard season last year, with low volumes, high prices and unstable demand, we were expecting this citrus season to be a much better and more predictable one than last year, due to better volumes and quality. In line with our expectations, we have finalized our retail programs and continue at full pace.”
Eren explains that the availability of the citrus products will be much better this season, despite the challenges and delay that the weather introduced. “For nearly all citrus products, higher volumes were expected when compared to last season. The weather had impacts in terms of both cultivation and harvesting, and caused a slight delay for the start of the season on top of smaller sizes in the field. However, producers who took early action had means to tackle the hot weather, so we managed to continue our operations under these difficult circumstances.”
The European and North American markets are doing better than initially expected according to Eren: “We’ve seen a strong demand from almost all of our existing markets, way before the season had started, as we were fixing our programs for the season. Our goal is to both fully meet the demands of our existing customers whom we have been working with for long time, as well as increase our volumes with the newly acquired ones. Until now, we might say mainly Europe, Russia, North America markets are overperforming, whereas we foresee the same trend from Far Eastern markets as we move towards the late varieties.”
Turkey isn’t the only country with a better citrus harvest this year. Eren states that the competition will also have a strong presence on the markets. “We were anticipating heavy competition from all of our competitors, as they were expecting a better crop as well. We naturally target the same markets as these countries. However, there is a separation between them in terms of region. Some concentrate more on Europe, whereas others mainly focus on Russia and the Far East. For us, we nearly go for all their target markets and compete with them on a region basis.”
Although competition is strong this year, Eren feels that the Turkish citrus has a competitive advantage in the long run: “The prevailing climate in the south of Turkey, where nearly all citrus production comes from, is a moderate subtropical climate. Thanks to the climate, the fertile soils and the ecological conditions, high quality citrus fruits are able to grow in Turkey. The season lasts from September to the end of May, with exports to more than 100 countries and on-going marketing activities to pave the upward trend both in existing and new markets. Developments in land, sea and air transport along with technological investments in packaging, storage and irrigation facilities brings us the competitive advantage in the long run.”
“Thanks to newly opened markets and newly added retail chains to our customer base, we believe that our expectations as a very good season from the very beginning will be realized. The citrus seasons usually alternate between good season and lower seasons, globally. Last year was an off-season, where the volume was low and price and volatility was high as well. This year is a calmer, good volume season and we expect it to be a good one!” Eren concludes.
For more information:
Coskun Eren
Eren
Tel: +90 533 695 5802
Email: [email protected]
www.freshanatolia.com