“Canada is the upcoming market for black figs”

The harvesting of the Bursa Black Figs is about to come to and end, with only three more weeks left in the season. The season has been good to Alanar, the Turkish company is expanding into new territories and is noticing a popularity trend of the figs.

About three years ago the figs were relatively unknown to certain regions, but that has changed over the past few years, Yigit Gokyigit, Marketing and Sales Manager of Alanar says: “A few years ago nobody had even heard of the figs in some markets, but we’re seeing a rise of popularity of the Black Figs in Canada and the Far East of Asia. Europe is still our strongest market, but we’re making moves to ensure the figs get even more popular in places like Canada and Singapore. We’re already seeing a lot more awareness of the produce in those regions and I expect this awareness to increase as we enforce our new marketing plans.”

The use of air freight has made these new territories possible for Alanar, but Europe is still the big market when it comes to figs: “We’re exporting them to the UK, Germany, Switzerland. There are hardly countries in Europe that don’t order them, honestly. Luckily we’ve been producing quite a bit more this season so we have no problem meeting the demand at this point.” Yigit continues.

The fruits themselves have been slightly lucky, with less of the produce being damaged by bad weather. “We’ve had more losses to rain in the previous seasons. This year of course we’ve had some losses, but we can’t complain. We never sell the damaged figs anyway, so consumers would never buy any damaged goods. For us as an exporter less damaged produce means we’ve managed to sell even more high quality figs with better prices as the fruit has become more popular in new markets.”

The harvesting of figs will come to an end in about three weeks, but the Black Figs will remain available after that for some time. Alanar will then switch focus to the upcoming pomegranate-season.

Yigit Gokyigit