For green plums in Turkey, the season is just about to reach its end. It’s been a pretty satisfying season, but did come with quite a few challenges. The weather and demands for different kinds of packaging proved to be difficult, but luckily one Turkish exporter managed to stay ahead of the curve.
For Kenan Aslan, the manager for Turkish fruit exporter Sinerji, the biggest challenge for his green plums this year was the weather: “The weather in Turkey has been really bad for a while now. There was a lot of rainy days, and even some hail. Hail is terrible for our harvest, as it can damage a lot of the fruits. Luckily we had some protection in the form of netting, which saved some of the produce. We also don’t have to rely on the plums as a company, as we are a big exporter when it comes to fresh peppers, fresh black figs and pomegranates.”
The green plums of Sinerji mostly find their way into European countries. “We expect to export somewhere between 100 and 200 tons of green plums this season. Most of them are transported to Germany and Sweden, but a fair amount also finds its way into the French and Dutch markets. We’d love to enter Luxembourg though, as we’ve not exported there before,” Aslan explains. “Luckily we don’t have a lot of competition. Spain also deals in green plums, but nowhere near the numbers that Turkey exports. The season will end in about 15 to 20 days for the Papaz variety. The other popular variety, Can, has already finished. Papaz is the better tasting variety and we still have quite a volume available.”
A big difference with last season was the required packaging, says Aslan: “Last year our clients mostly requested smaller forms of packaging. The trend this year seems to be a demand for bigger packaging options. This wouldn’t normally be a problem, but it was quite hard to get the packaging that our clients wanted. Luckily the prices are still relatively good, and thanks to the Ramadan the clients don’t really care about the prices anyway. The most important part is the quality, which we’re very confident about this season!”
For more information:
Kenan Aslan
Sinerji
Tel: +90 554 845 8965
Email: info@sinerjifresh.com / kenan@sinerjifresh.com
www.sinerjifresh.com