Fresh Plaza 2020

“Turkey’s total fresh cherry production will pass last year’s figures”

The Turkish cherry season is almost wrapping up. According to one Turkish exporter, the season has been successful, but not without its challenges. Although great weather conditions played a big role in the quality of the cherries, the prices at the start of the season made it difficult to be competitive at first.

It’s already been three months since the start of the Turkish cherry operations for the 2020 season and it is finally coming to end. It’s been a very vibrant season, with positives and negatives alike, says Ani Tarim sales and marketing manager Mehmet Çakmak. “Frankly speaking, we had an uneasy start of the cherry season with pricing for early varieties, including the Covid-19 challenges. As the quantity of early variety yields is not that high, it was a disadvantageous situation to procure cherries with competitive prices for export. However, after the quantity of crops increased with the cherries coming from different growing regions like Manisa and Denizli week by week, the cherry prices, mainly of the Ziraat 0900 variety, have dropped to satisfying levels. By mid-June, in addition to cherries from our own orchards located in Eğirdir-Isparta, we continued to procure from Uluborlu-Isparta, Akşehir and Sultandağı-Afyon regions as well. Since mid-July, after the complete of harvest in our own orchards in Beyşehir as well, we keep procuring from the Hadim-Konya and Ulukışla-Niğde regions for the late-period cherries. We plan to cease our deliveries early August for this season.”