The bigger column is not the one an exporter expects
An exporter arriving with a chocolate catalogue assumes chocolate is the market. Here it is the smaller half: sugar confectionery — jellies, hard candy, toffees, dragées, coated nuts and wrapped sweets — carries 4,108,835 US dollars against 1,623,087 for chocolate and chocolate preparations.
Both halves were counted the same way in the same year, so the comparison holds firmer than either total. It is also the part that changes a packing list: a container weighted towards wrapped lines travels dry and sits easier through the warm months on a long overland finish.
A declared table, and where its edge lies
Several markets in this region are visible only in mirror form: the country publishes nothing, so the figure is rebuilt from other countries’ export declarations. Not this one. The table above is the buyer’s own customs record, unusually solid for a market of this size.
Its limit lies elsewhere. A declared table records the partner a consignment was declared against, and on a shelf restocked overland that is not always where the goods were made. Read it as a map of routes into the country, not a census of the factories behind them.
One name at the head of both columns
Sorted by source, the chocolate column is barely a list: the share recorded against South Africa rounds to 100.0 per cent, while France and Italy round to 0.0 per cent each. On sugar confectionery the same neighbour again rounds to 100.0 per cent.
A name that rounds to zero is not a second source a buyer can lean on. This shelf is full, not empty, and what it carries is concentration rather than scarcity: one origin, one crossing, one factory calendar and one price list governing both categories at once.
Where Türkiye sits, and what the blank means
Nowhere. Türkiye appears in neither column for 2024, and nothing is gained by softening that.
The blank does not say Turkish confectionery is unknown at the counter here, because product reaching this shelf through a neighbouring wholesaler’s chain is counted inside that chain’s flow. What it does say is that no direct lane from Gaziantep showed up in that year’s figures. That reads as an opening rather than a warning: a lane to be started, with routing, terms and documents agreed in writing rather than inherited.
Every container here finishes by road
There is no coastline, so the last leg is overland whatever the origin, including for the goods on the shelf today. From our side the sea leg runs out of Mersin, about three hours by road from our factory in Gaziantep, then overland from the port of entry next door.
Terms quoted are FCA Gaziantep, FOB Mersin, CIF or DAP, and the offer names the port of entry, the delivery term and who makes the entry declaration. Chocolate and chocolate-coated lines are quoted in a reefer through the warm months, with the cold chain booked for the whole journey, not the sea part alone; Turkish delight, dragées, jellies and wrapped confectionery travel dry. Both share one container.
Turning the table into a price list
A table shows where the risk sits; it cannot say what a carton costs. That takes a list. Send the lines you want priced — chocolate, dragées, Turkish delight, wrapped confectionery, spreads in jars — with the format for each, an indicative quantity and the delivery point.
The answer comes back line by line: specification, allergens, metric net weight, case and pallet figures, delivery term. Certificates are issued for our factory, and the origin document and the rulesthat apply are named in the offer in the form valid on the day. Couverture, bulk chocolate by the kilo, raw nuts, halva, tahini and baklava are sourced on request: we confirm composition and format before quoting. Tell us which lines the container should carry.
Are these official import figures, or a reconstruction?
They are the country’s own declaration at its own border for 2024: 1,623,087 US dollars of chocolate and 4,108,835 US dollars of sugar confectionery. That is firmer than the mirror tables several neighbouring markets are read through. The caution is different here: a declared table records the partner the consignment was declared against, which on an overland shelf is not always where the goods were made.
South Africa rounds to 100.0 per cent in both columns. Why look at Gaziantep at all?
Not to replace a chain that works — to sit beside it. France and Italy are in the chocolate table and round to 0.0 per cent each, so on any working definition there is one source, one crossing and one factory calendar behind both categories. A second lane changes how many hands sit between a producer and your warehouse, and what you can do in the week the usual chain does not deliver.
Türkiye appears in neither column. Does that mean the product is untested here?
It means no direct lane showed up in that year’s figures. Product that reaches this shelf through a neighbouring wholesaler’s chain is counted inside that chain’s flow rather than as a shipment of its own, so the table is a statement about routing rather than about whether the lines suit the counter. A first container kept mixed and modest per line is how that second question gets answered.
