The bigger column is the sweets one
A catalogue arriving from Türkiye usually opens with chocolate, and here chocolate is the smaller half. Sugar confectionery — jellies, hard candy, toffees, dragées, coated nuts and wrapped sweets — carried 5,334,770 US dollars against 2,082,201 for chocolate and chocolate preparations.
Both halves were counted the same way in the same year, which makes the comparison firmer than either total. It also changes a packing list before it changes a price: wrapped and jellied lines travel dry, which suits a journey that finishes overland.
A declared record, and where its edge lies
Several markets in this region are visible only in mirror form: the country publishes nothing, and the figure is reassembled from everybody else’s export declarations. Not this one. What you are reading is the customs record itself.
Its limit sits elsewhere. A declared table records the partner a consignment was entered against, and on a shelf restocked across land borders that is not always where the goods were made. Read it as a map of routes, not a census of factories. Wholesale and importer phrasing measures zero searches a month here, so this table is the only map there is.
Chocolate: two neighbours, then a long drop
Sorted by origin, the chocolate column is a short list. South Africa accounts for 51.7 per cent and Zambia for 33.2 per cent. The first name from outside the region, the Netherlands, comes third at 3.1 per cent.
Two neighbours carry the column between them, and everything from beyond the region starts at a small share. That is concentration rather than scarcity, and it decides how a supplier should write to you: the shelf is full, it is full from close by, and nobody should pretend otherwise.
Confectionery takes a different road
The larger column does not follow the same route. Kenya leads sugar confectionery with 57.0 per cent, Zambia is second with 25.6 per cent, and South Africa — first in chocolate — comes third with 9.4 per cent.
Two categories, two lead origins, two chains. A buyer with a working chocolate supplier does not automatically have a sweets supplier, and a month that goes wrong on one road need not go wrong on the other.
Where Türkiye sits, and what the table cannot show
On both lists, near the bottom of both: eighteenth in chocolate at 0.02 per cent, tenth in sugar confectionery at 0.29 per cent. Small, and not nothing: nobody here needs Turkish confectionery introduced. The higher position belongs to the bigger column, and that is how a first container would be weighted.
What no table shows is how many hands a carton passed through: goods restocked from a neighbour have stood in somebody’s warehouse and carried somebody’s margin first. There is no seaport here either, so every container finishes overland whatever its origin; our sea leg runs from Mersin, about three hours by road from our factory in Gaziantep.
Turning the table into a price list
A table shows where the routes sit; it cannot say what a carton costs. That takes a list: the lines you want priced — chocolate, dragées, Turkish delight, wrapped confectionery, spreads in jars — the format for each, an indicative quantity and the delivery point.
The answer comes back per line: specification, allergens, metric net weight, case and pallet figures, the delivery term — FCA Gaziantep, FOB Mersin, CIF or DAP — and the reefer lines marked. Certificates are issued for our factory; the origin document and the rules that apply are named in the offer in theform valid on the day. Couverture, bulk chocolate by the kilo, raw nuts, halva, tahini and baklava sit outside the range: sourced on request, and we confirm composition and format before quoting. Tell us which lines the first container should carry.
Are these official import figures, or a reconstruction?
They are the country’s own declaration at its own border for 2024: 2,082,201 US dollars of chocolate and 5,334,770 US dollars of sugar confectionery. That is firmer than the mirror tables through which several neighbouring markets have to be read. The caution here is a different one: a declared table records the partner a consignment was entered against, which on an overland shelf is not always where the goods were made.
Both columns are filled from inside the region. Why look at Gaziantep at all?
Not to replace a chain that works, but to sit beside it with different lines and a shorter path. Chocolate arrives 51.7 per cent from South Africa and 33.2 per cent from Zambia; sugar confectionery 57.0 per cent from Kenya and 25.6 per cent from Zambia. One container loaded at origin can carry chocolate, dragées, Turkish delight, wrapped confectionery and spreads in jars from our own factory on one order and onedocument set.
Türkiye is already in both tables. What changes with a direct container?
The position is eighteenth at 0.02 per cent in chocolate and tenth at 0.29 per cent in sugar confectionery, so the product is not unknown at the counter. What is open is the number of hands between a producer and your warehouse, which lines are actually on the container, and how much of the deal is written down before money moves: price, case weight, delivery term and producer stated per line.
