The sweet column is the market
Read the two figures beside each other and the brief changes. A chocolate column of 441,498 dollars is a shelf rather than a market of its own; the confectionery column at 3,238,903 is where the turnover sits. Both are modest, and we would rather say so than dress them up.
There is a physical reason behind the gap, and your delivery vehicles already know it. Boiled sweets, jellies, dragées and Turkish delight tolerate heat and a long inland road; chocolate argues with both.
Three sources, three unrelated trades
On chocolate the declared sources for 2024 run Côte d’Ivoire at 33.1 per cent, China at 27.9 and Germany at 10.3. Three origins, three logics: a neighbour reachable by road, a distant source competing on unit price, and a European source bought for specification.
No origin holds more than a third, and that matters more than which one leads. A fragmented column behaves nothing like a concentrated one: no listing is safe, buyers move on format and delivery rather than habit, and a new reference need not unseat anybody to be stocked.
More than half the sweets from one origin
Sugar confectionery reads the opposite way. India holds 54.2 per cent, China 11.4 and Indonesia 11.1. More than half of the larger column arrives from a single origin a long way off, then finishes the trip overland.
That is a description, not a complaint: the line works, or it would not hold that share. It is also one pipe. When it runs late, everything behind it is small, and a small supplier fills a gap slowly. A second origin is taken for continuity long before it is taken for a few percentage points.
What eighth and tenth actually mean
Two entries pointing in opposite directions. The larger share, 2.51 per cent, sits on the smaller column; the smaller share, 1.52 per cent, sits on the column carrying the volume. Neither is a position to boast about, and origin alone settles nothing at that level.
What the entries do show is that goods of this origin have been declared here before: the route has been run, the description accepted, the document set is not being invented for your consignment. What is left is a question about products and formats, not countries.
What the table leaves out
These are the country’s own declared imports rather than a mirror reading of other people’s export returns. That makes them firm, not complete: a declared value carries no case weights, no unit prices and no sign of what sold through, and it records where a consignment came from rather than what happened on the way. With no seaboard, goods land at a neighbouring port and finish by road, so those hands never appear in the column.
Search fills none of the gap: 307 raw English phrases, 746 French, roughly 190 and 120 searches a month above a twenty-a-month threshold, and none of it buying language (Burkina Faso).
Turning the column into an offer
Send the lines you want priced; the format for each — bulk carton, retail box, kilo bag or jar, the jar line being a spread; an indicative quantity; the port of entry and the inland destination; and whether the pack stays in our standard pack or carries your brand, nothing being printed before you approve it.
The offer comes back line by line: ingredients and allergens, net weight, case data, the minimum for that line and the delivery term. Terms quoted are FCA Gaziantep, FOB Mersin, CIF or DAP, and Mersin is about three hours from our factory by road, so one load can carryboth columns at once (mixed container).
Turkish product is eighth and tenth here. Why read that as an opening?
Because the two columns are shaped differently. Chocolate is split between a neighbour, a distant volume source and a European one, with no origin past a third — a column where a new reference can be listed without unseating anyone. Sugar confectionery is the opposite, more than half of it from one origin, which is exactly where a second source is worth pricing. Start with named lines and samples rather than with a standing order.
How firm are these import figures?
They are the country’s own declared import values for 2024, not a mirror reading taken from other countries’ export returns, so they are firmer than the figures available for several markets nearby. Their limit is what any declaration leaves out: no case weights, no unit prices, nothing about the pace of sell-through, and no record of how many hands the goods passed through before they were declared.
We have no seaboard. Can one container still cover both columns?
Yes. The minimum is set per line rather than per container, so chocolate, dragées, Turkish delight, wrapped sweets and jars travel on one order and one document set, by sea to the port of entry you name and inland by road from there. Chocolate and coated lines are quoted in a reefer through the warm months while Turkish delight, dragées and jellies travel dry, and the two share the same container. Certificates are issued for our factory. Couverture, bulk chocolate by the kilo, raw nuts, dried fruit, cocoa,baklava, halva, tahini and empty packaging sit outside our range and are sourced on request; we confirm composition and format before quoting. The offer states what applies on the day it isissued.
