Turkey fresh produce export calendar

Roughly June and July, opening in the south in May and finishing at altitude in August. Turkey is the largest cherry exporter in the world, and Ziraat 0900 — Napoleon — is most of what leaves.

The window is the Northern Hemisphere’s answer to Chile, six months out of phase with it, and it sells to Germany, Russia and increasingly the Far East. Turkish cherries reach a European buyer by truck in two or three days, so the sea question on this row is only about the long lanes east.

Interdonato opens in September, Lamas and Kütdiken carry from October into the spring, and stored fruit ships past that into the early summer. Mersin is the port.

The window sits on Spain’s and just ahead of Argentina’s, which makes Turkey the swing supplier in most markets rather than the base one. Lemons store well enough that the shipping season outlasts the harvest by months, so the question on this row is almost never availability and almost always price.

Satsumas from about October, Nova and W. Murcott from November into February. The volume goes to Russia, Eastern Europe and the Gulf rather than west, where Spain and Morocco already hold the shelf.

For a European buyer that makes this a competitive calendar rather than a sourcing one. Turkish fruit that cannot go to its usual market — a closed border, a currency move — still arrives somewhere, and the somewhere is usually a market a Moroccan or Egyptian programme had been priced into.

Roughly August to October out of the Aegean. It fills the weeks between the end of the Southern Hemisphere programmes and the start of the European harvest, in the same slot Egypt occupies.

Most of it reaches Europe overland and Russia by truck. The container volume is what goes further east, and on that routing the thing to watch is the far end: table grapes travel well but punish a slow discharge more than they punish a slow voyage.

Hicaznar runs from about October to December, and stored fruit ships into the new year. Turkey and Egypt are the two Mediterranean origins a European buyer sees in those months, a few weeks apart.

Pomegranate is one of the most forgiving things in a reefer — it stores for months and it does not bruise easily — which is why the shipping season stretches so far past the harvest, and why nobody watches the container. On this row the risk is demurrage rather than quality.

Roughly August and September, from Aydın and from Bursa, opening in July and finishing in October. There is no storage tail: fresh figs do not wait.

Almost all of the fresh crop reaches Europe by truck and the long-haul volume flies. If you are looking at a Turkish fig figure that runs all year, it is the dried trade — a different product in a different box. This window is the fresh one.