The peak of the Turkish apple season is coming up, says Alper Kerim, owner of the Turkish apple exporter Demir Fresh Fruits: “Demand for apples is increasing day by day in India, and as a result we’ll be heading into our peak season for the upcoming three months. We’ve started to promote and market our brand DeBa in India since 2019. We had a very good plan and programs for long term deals, and on top of that worked on promotion and branding in the Indian supermarkets as well. However, just marketing alone isn’t sufficient to have your brand succeed in India. The market is very demanding, and you need to bring the required quality to the table, on a consistent basis.”
To ensure the quality of the apples sent to India is the best it can be, Demir Fresh Fruits invested in a new packing machine, Kerim explains. “We have made many investments for our research and development branch, our biggest investment was a new packing machine, which was the latest system available in Turkey. Fully automatic systems have helped us a lot to improve our quality, which contributes to the popularity of our DeBa brand, especially in the south of India.”
As there will be fewer volumes of good quality apples available in the coming months, prices are expected to increase, says Kerim: “The price for Turkish apples had remained the same until February started. However, once February got going, price started to increase, as good quality apples became harder to find. I expect this trend to continue over the coming months and good quality apples will become rather expensive. This’ll have to be communicated in order to face surprised buyers after they’ve received their containers.”
Turkey is still dealing with the aftermath of the terrible earthquake of last week. Kerim expects it’ll be challenging to transport anything locally for a while. “The earthquake is a big disaster for our country and we still facing big problems because of what happened. İskenderun port was one of the biggest ports in Turkey and it is totally out of order right now. Thousands of containers were burned in port. Especially local transport has become a big problem and challenge for us, who knows how long it’ll take to get things going again.”
For more information:
Alper Kerim
Demir Fresh Fruits
Tel: +90 532 514 2080
Email: alper@dff.com.tr
www.dff.com.tr