The Turkish cherry season has finally kicked off, with three more regions starting the harvest soon, says Yigit Gokyigit, commercial coordinator for the Turkish fresh produce exporter: "Alanar hasn't started harvesting the cherries crop from its own orchards yet, but we did start the season this week, thanks to the cherries of our contracted growers. We expect to harvest the cherries in our own orchards next week, our orchards are located in three different Turkish regions; Manisa, Canakkale and Afyon. In Afyon the harvest is expected to start around the end of June."
Alanar was acquired in 2018 by Tekfen Holding, one of the largest conglomerates in the country. After the acquisition, group made a huge investment on its orchards, mainly for cherries, figs, apricots, plums and blueberries. According to Gokyigit, this investment means the volumes of cherries that Alanar will harvest over the years will steadily increase every season. "We still have relatively young trees, so our crop volumes still increase every year. We expect to have over 2,000 tons of cherries from our own orchards annually, in about five years. Due to the impact of the weather, we lost a significant amount of our crop this year. We'll be able to harvest up to 400 tons of cherries from our orchards, compared to the 600 tons we had forecasted ahead of the season."
The fact that volumes are lower doesn't mean the season won't be successful, as Gokyigit observed better quality as well as larger sizes than last year: "Although we lost important volumes of cherries this year, we expect to have good quality and larger sized cherries compared to previous years. We see huge demand for cherries this year, not only from our existing business partners, but also from new markets. As usual, we expect Germany to be our main market this year. We also expect to grow our sales in central and northern Europe. This season, we'll be working with new business partners from the Middle East and Pacific Asia as well."
"Turkey lost significant amount of cherry volume in many regions. Therefore, I expect less than half of crop to be available this year compared to previous years. It will be a challenging season due to this loss on volumes. I believe there will be an increasing demand for Turkish cherry, however it may not be possible to fulfil the demand completely, due to the lack of available volumes," Gokyigit concludes.
For more information:
Yigit Gokyigit
Alanar
Mobile: +90 549 804 87 56
Email: [email protected]
www.alanar.com.tr