The prices of Turkish lemons have increased due to a shortage in supply, says Akin Soyleyen, marketing manager for Turkish exporter Aksun: “With the fog clearing slowly after Covid; this year we have a clearer vision in terms of demand projection for citrus. We started with lemons in the beginning of October, compared to our usual end-September timing. Due to the lack of supply, we had to take things slowly since the shortage caused prices to be higher than normal. With the start of Lamas lemons last week, the demand picked up as well as the supply. Currently we’re packing Navels, lemons, grapefruits as well as mandarins in full swing.”
Lemons are especially lower in supply this year for Aksun, but the grapefruit production has increased, Soyleyen explains. “When we compare the volumes with last year; lemons has seen a decline of about 41 per cent, due to the shortage and local demand. But we are filling that gap with oranges and mandarins this season. Grapefruits has always been our main line of citrus and our production has increased by 13 per cent, despite the general shortage in the world. Since the supply in Florida and Israel is also short, we’re able to reach markets that were harder to reach before; such as Japan and the Americas.”
Despite the challenges, Soyleyen expects they’ll have a successful season, and other producing countries have had it much worse than Turkey: “We’re expecting the demand to be strong throughout the season for this year and going into 2023. Other exporting countries are facing their own problems and compared to us, we seem to be lucky by only suffering a shortage in supply. There are way worse situations then having shortage in certain produce lines, as can be seen in other countries, like hurricanes or heatwaves.”
Soyleyen states that the company’s pomegranate campaign was even more difficult, as the weather completely overthrew any projections the company might have had for their production: “When it comes to our pomegranates, it’s a completely different story. We were expecting a good season, before the Mother Nature decided otherwise. Right before the harvesting period we had heavy rains, causing the supply to cripple. Currently having premium quality pomegranates has become kind of a luxury. Our initial projection versus current supply, comes down to a decrease of about 57 per cent in the final production. That being said, we still continue to supply our contracted partners in EU and Asia; only we’re not able to cater all the demand that comes our way. All in all, we simply hope for a much better season next year, let’s hope Mother Nature agrees with our sentiment.”
For more information:
Akin Soyleyen
Aksun
Tel: +90 324 234 41 90
Mobile: +90 532 590 75 92
Email: [email protected]
www.aksun.com.tr/en/