The stonefruit season in Turkey is about to start and for one particular exporter the hopes are the upcoming season will be one that defines them. With Spain as a strong competitor, the Turkish company aims to improve itself in every way possible.
For Turkish exporter Eren Tarim, the upcoming season is met with optimism: “We have good expectations to be honest. The worst of the weather is already over and since this year is generally hotter, we expect the season to start earlier. Starting early means we’ll be in a better position than our competitors like Spain in terms of availability,” Coskun Eren explains. “Last season the biggest challenges came from our competition with Spain, in terms of pricing and obtaining gardens with adequate analysis requirements for EU. This year we have started a different analysis check method and it has paid dividends for our citrus cultivation. Because this worked well with citrus, we’re going to bring this method over to our stonefruit cultivation and I believe we’ll have no more problems when it comes to this issue. As for the price, I also believe we will be more competitive with Spain due to USD/EUR being on the Turkish exporters’ side this year.”
For the upcoming season, changes are coming. Part of the reason Eren is trying to improve is to beat the competition, but they also want to protect their crops from bad weather: “Spain is our biggest competitor in terms of our stonefruits. They are really good at what they do. When it comes to packaging specifically, I would say they are doing better than Turkey. This puts a huge incentive on us to improve, though.” Eren says. “Me, personally, I love a good rivalry. Rivals push you to improve yourself. Farmers are also investing in netting above their fields to avoid hail damage. In big gardens this is an expensive project, but if at any point hail hits the gardens, it will have been well worth it. Thanks to these improvements, we hope that all our stonefruits combined will put us at the 3000 tons mark this season.”
One way to beat your competition is to take their domestic market by storm. Although this was not a tactic for Eren Tarim, it was an unexpected outcome last year: “We are currently exporting to over 62 countries, but we wish to develop our share on the Spanish market as well. Season gaps increase and change every year. This year we exported a good volume of citrus to Spain. This was a surprise to us, but maybe we can do the same with our stonefruits,” Eren says. “The Nordic countries are also very interesting for us, Denmark and Sweden are definitely on our list. Also, if the Brexit happens for real, surely there will be some interesting changes for the UK market as well.”
Eren Tarim attended Fruit Logistica in Berlin this year and were a part of the country attendance. According to Eren, this limited their options in terms of design, but did give them more attention for their country: “We showcased citrus, since they are the only fruits we had ready at that moment, however we also wanted to highlight our figs, as they are very important for our company. We did notice the exhibition seemed more quiet this year compared to previous years. Although our stand was still filled the entire time, about 50 per cent of the people we meet are existing customers. Newcomers still came by our stand, but in smaller numbers than we’ve come to expect.”
The fair did do a lot of good for Eren Tarim though, Eren explains: “The biggest surprise for us was the increased interest from the UK and Canada. They visited our pavilion a lot more compared to last year. We’re already working with the United Kingdom at the moment, but Brexit is coming and we’re already feeling the British are exploring new opportunities. Honestly it’s a very exciting time. Canada also seems to be very interested in Turkey. We’ve been working with Canada for about seven years now and I would have to say we know what they want and we can provide it. Another surprise for us was the fact that logistic companies are growing very fast. New technologies for shipping arrive every day and carrier companies are finding new ways to provide a better and more competitive service.”
When asked if there was a lesson learned at this edition of Fruit Logistica, Eren knew exactly where to find new opportunities next year: “Like I mentioned earlier, every year we see less visitors in the Turkish pavilion, so this clearly gives us a message that we can’t just rely on people coming to our stands and do business that way, like in the old days. It seems that we need to go to them from now on. The outcome of Fruit Logistica for me, is as follows: we need to be more active and aggressive in terms of marketing and react to where the market is headed in ten years’ time. The fresh fruits business is hastily converting into very big market chains who require a lot of tests/certificates and have very hard product acceptance terms, we need to adapt to that.” Eren concludes.
For more information:
Coskun Eren
Eren Tarim
Phone: +90 324 454 1487-88
Mobile: +90 533 695 5802
Email: coskun@erentarim.com
www.erentarim.com