The Turkish cherry season is about to kick off. One exporter has invested heavily for this new season, upgrading and adding machinery to increase their packing capacity. While several countries have had damages due to cold weather, the Ziraat-900 variety was hardly affected. This could lead to a successful season for the Turkish cherries.
Turkish fruit exporter Canlar has invested heavily for the upcoming cherry season, assistant manager Enes Gurgen says: “Our preparations for the 2021 cherry season are about to be completed. We continue our investments in our country, as Turkey is the world's largest cherry producer. To meet the growing demand, we upgraded our eight lines Unitec Cherry Vision 2.0 packing machine to 20 lines Unitec Cherry Vision 3.0. With this improvement, we have increased our cherry processing capacity to 15 tons per hour. Considering work safety and hygiene conditions in packaging processes, we expanded our indoor area from 5,000m² to 8000m² with our increased capacity.”
“Our company, which manages all cherry process from production to shipment delicately, also invested in Unitec AC 350,” Gurgen continues. “This investment is also significant since this technology will be used in Turkey first time by us, and it will provide us three-time faster packaging than the regular lines. This year, we estimate that the first cherry shipments of the Ziraat-900 variety will start in the last week of May.”
Although there have been frost damages in other countries, the cherry variety that Canlar exports from Turkey hasn’t been affected as much, Gurgen explains: “So far, seasonal conditions have been suitable for the Ziraat-900 variety. Especially, our primary export type, Ziraat-900, was not affected by the cold weather two weeks ago. On the other hand, early cherry varieties preferred in the domestic market have lost a little. This season we aim for a minimum of 6,000 tons of cherry export. With our new investments and higher capacity, I think it won't be hard to accomplish this goal. The favorable weather conditions in Turkey and the fact that other countries have been partially affected by frost indicate that it will be a good season for the Turkish cherry producers and exporters.”
Canlar has been active in quite a few markets in Europe as well as Russia, but aims to export to several Asian countries this year as well: “In addition to the European and Russian markets, the demand for Turkish cherries increases, thanks to flights to many locations worldwide. Our company primarily works with Northern European countries -Norway, Sweden, and Denmark- and other European countries such as The Netherlands and Germany. Especially the Far East market has become an open market for us thanks to air cargo transportation. We aim to export to Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, and similar countries. We have received our export permits for the markets of China, South Korea, and Taiwan. We hope that the Chinese market, where we did a good job last season, will open this year as well. We plan to work intensively with our Sunny Fruit brand in European destinations and the Solaris brand in the Far East this year.” Gurgen concludes.
