THE GLOBAL WINDOW OF TURKISH FOOD AND AGRICULTURE The Global Window of Turkish Food and Agriculture Sector
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Press release…
Chairman of Aegean Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Exporters’ Association Hayrettin Uçak said, “I think the importance of food production has emerged in all its reality during the pandemic process. This reflected positively on the exports of countries that produce agricultural products like ours.”
Stating that when they look at the first 6 months of 2020, Uçak noted, “We see that we exported 1.1 billion dollars of fresh fruits and vegetables, with an increase of 38 percent compared to the same period of 2019. Our exports of fruit and vegetable products increased by 8 percent from 722 million dollars to 778 million dollars.”
Uçak continued as follows: “While our Aegean fresh fruit and vegetable exporters exported 94 million dollars of fresh fruits and vegetables in the first half of 2019, they have brought 137 million dollars to our country with an increase of 45 percent in the same period of 2020.
In this period, the prominent products in our exports were cherries, peaches, strawberries and tomatoes. In our export markets; Russia, Germany and Iraq are the leaders. We can say that our main export market is the European Union and Commonwealth of Independent States countries.
However, our products such as cherries, figs and apricots with high unit prices are also in demand in the Far East and South East Asian markets.”
Uçak explained, “Another point we care about is that fruit and vegetables are processed and presented to foreign markets with added value.
We export many of our traditional products such as pickles, tomato paste and dried tomatoes to many countries, including Europe and America.
In the first half of 2020, our exports of fruit and vegetable products from the Aegean Region; It reached 296 million dollars with a development of 5 percent.
Our Aegean Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Exporters’ Association carried its exports from 375 million dollars in the first half of 2019 to 433 million dollars with an increase of 16 percent in the January – June period of 2020.”
“With the positive impact of the normalization steps in the second half of 2020 and the digital marketing activities we will perform, I can confidently say that we will reach our export target of 1 billion dollars for the end of 2020, despite the pandemic, by maintaining the performance we achieved in the first half of 2020 in exports in the second half of 2020,” Uçak added.
“I would like to express my gratitude to all our producers who make our exports sustainable with their production and to 216 exporters who process these products in their businesses and export them to all over the world,” Uçak concluded…
