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Costs and strong inflation making it difficult to make a profit

Low prices make for challenging Turkish pomegranate season

Despite good volumes and good quality, the pomegranate market is rather challenging for Turkish exporters, says Yigit Gokyigit, commercial coordinator for Turkish fresh produce exporter Alanar: "Pomegranate season started in Turkey nearly two months ago. We've been receiving good demand for our pomegranates as well. In fact, the market is very challenging this year in terms of pricing. Inflation ratio is high in the country compared to the previous decades, this has increased our costs dramatically. On the other hand, exchange rate of foreign currencies to the Turkish Lira increases with less ratio than the inflation. Therefore, our profit margin decreased to a very low level at this point."

Gokyigit can't complain about the demand for the Turkish pomegranates, but the expectations in terms of prices is hard to meet, he explains. "The current demand is satisfying for us. Our business partners around the world, such as Germany, the UK, Pacific Asia and even Canada would like to have Alanar's pomegranates. However, especially in our main market, which is Europe, the pomegranate season started with promotions. That cemented our customers' expectations of a lower price this season. Since we already struggle to control our increasing costs due to high inflation, it's much more harder to support our customers with all of these promotional prices."

Overall, production has been steady and satisfying this year, in part due to positive weather conditions, Gokyigit states. "Volumes for pomegranates are really good this year. There are good quality Turkish pomegranates in the market. I would say volume wise we are having one of the best seasons in last couple of years. This can partly be attributed to the weather not having negative effect on the pomegranates this season. We had a good pre-harvest season in terms of climate, which resulted in good quality pomegranates. Surface defect rates and colors are better than they would be in a regular year."

The challenges of costs and inflation are prominent, despite the Turkish exporters having an overall good season, Gokyigit emphasizes: "Turkey is one of the most prominent pomegranate growers of the world. Therefore, even though there are many pomegranate growers and exports, there's always room for all the companies to have a place in the market. As I mentioned before, we're having a good season this year in terms of volume and quality; however, profitability is the most challenging subject for Turkish exporters this year. I expect export prices to increase in next couple of days, since I think the current prices are not manageable anymore for exporters, who I assume expect to finalize the season with some profit."

"Our company's name 'Alanar' means Perfect for 'Ala', Pomegranate for 'nar'. So Alanar means Perfect-Pomegranate. As mentioned in our name, we've been providing best possible quality pomegranate, with a great service for our business partners for over ten years. I'm very happy to see increasing and continuous demand from our existing customers, while we're also expanding our opportunities to new markets. All of this proves us that we are on the right path of providing Alanar's 'Perfect-Pomegranates'," Gokyigit concludes.

For more information:
Yigit Gokyigit
Alanar
Mobile: +90 549 804 87 56
Email: [email protected]
www.alanar.com.tr