The cherry season has started and it’s only a few more days until the main variety of Ana Fruit will get going, says marketing manager Kubra Nur Guven: “For the first crop, one of the early varieties has been harvested a few weeks ago and growers were a little nervous about the cold weather conditions going on. However, the first crop was great and everything looks promising for our main variety Z900- Napoleon, which we expect to start on the last week of May. All these things considered, we’re expecting a fruitful and busy season.”
Guven states that Ana Fruit expects to have more volumes this season. “As is the norm at the start every season, demand is rather high at the moment. Our main market is Europe, as we are the main supplier of a supermarket chain in Germany. However, our brands Laila- Redly are well represented in Asia, the Middle East and South Africa as well. As the leading cherry exporter company of Turkey, last year we exported over 8.000 tons of cherries which is over 10% of Turkey’s cherry export and we are planning to make it 10.000 tons this season. Volume expectations of crops are different for each region, but with the increasing plantations every year, we can expect a higher crop by the end of the season. The early harvesting areas tend to have a lower volume this year, so kick-off prices could be slightly higher than previous years.”
Despite being very confident on the upcoming cherry season, there have been some concerns last season that could carry over to the new season, Guven explains. “Actually, due to coronavirus, we can see a rapid increase of the trend of healthy lifestyle and its positive effects on fresh produce. So, we saw a higher demand for our fresh cherries, but affected by the unstabilities occurred in these pandemic times. We export to over 30 countries and last year we’ve faced some significant challenges with the transportation. Some destinations had no flights coming in, with other markets just having less transport options that were available before the pandemic started. This caused some uncertainties in our air-cargo shipments.”
To deal with the uncertainties that the coronavirus brought to the fresh produce trade, the cherry exporter has set up a solid customer service desk, being available to address any concerns their clients have: “Ana Fruit team was always been solution-oriented and accessible to its clients. We believe this attitude is one of the things that customers are looking for in these pandemic times. We ourselves and our partner companies were providing customer service 24/7 in orders to manage our clients’ concerns. We’ll continue this in the upcoming season as well.”
“Last year Ana Fruit opened the doors for cherry export to South Korea and some other countries. Our goal is to maintain our place in these markets as well as present our brands in new other destinations. With only a few days left to the start of our cherry season, we’re already geared up for our clients to have the best experience with Ana fruit, as always!” Guven concludes.
