There's only a few weeks left until the harvest of Turkish apricots commences and in contrast to the previous season, the weather hasn't had a major negative impact so far, says Yigit Gokyigit, commercial coordinator for the Turkish fresh produce exporter Alanar: "We expect a great season this year in terms of cultivation. Alanar grows all its apricots in its own orchards located in Manisa region of Turkey. This year, we expect to have larger sizes between 45+mm to 60+mm as majority of fruit. The Turkish weather had a positive impact on our apricots, in general. There does seem to be some slight frost damage, which made us lose a small percentage of the crop, but thanks to our orchard team, who took essential precautions for the frost, these losses were very limited."
Because of the weather last year, Alanar actually lost quite a bit of their apricot production. This year, Gokyigit expects a long and fruitful season instead. "Our previous apricot season was quite a disappointing one for us, since we lost the majority of our volumes due to the weather effects. Thankfully, this year we expect to harvest over 700 tons of large size, great quality apricots. We expect to do our first harvest around the fourth week of May. We have a long apricot season with 15 different varieties, and so we will have crops available until mid-August."
With these varieties, Gokyigit is sure they can supply the European clients and give them what the consumers require: "Alanar has unique variety of apricots, similar to Western European-Mediterranean varieties. Those fruits are very well-known especially in Europe and we see a huge demand for them. Those fruits are not only tasty and have an impressive surface, they also have very long shelf life, which is over 40 days."
As the apricots are exclusively sent to the European market, Gokyigit does not expect any logistical challenges, as the produce is sent by trucks. "We do not use the Red Sea route for our apricots, so our season will not be affected by that particular crisis. Our European business partners are willing to have all of our crop already, therefore we plan to deliver our apricots with trucks to the European counties we export to. As such, we anticipate we are headed towards a great season. As usual, we have the biggest demand from Germany, Central Europe and the UK," he concludes.
For more information:
Yigit Gokyigit
Alanar
Mobile: +90 549 804 87 56
Email: yigit.gokyigit@alanar.com.tr
www.alanar.com.tr