Two headings, and the smaller one is chocolate
Two customs headings carry this trade: chocolate and chocolate preparations, and sugar confectionery — jellies, hard candy, toffees, dragées, wrapped sweets and Turkish delight, everything sweet not built on cocoa.
On the declared 2024 figures the chocolate heading comes to 16,836,606 US dollars, sugar confectionery to 23,025,683. The non-chocolate column is the larger, which is worth knowing before a first list is drafted: an assortment built around tablets and bars is planned against the smaller column of this market.
One name at the head of both columns
Sorted by origin, both lists open with the same neighbour: South Africa holds 85.4 per cent of the chocolate column and 89.6 per cent of the confectionery column. That is a shelf being supplied, not a shelf standing empty.
Read one line down and neither column is shut. Germany takes 4.8 per cent of the chocolate; Poland 1.6 per cent and India 1.4 per cent of the confectionery — goods made well outside the region, clearing here as ordinary business. The question is not whether a distant origin can land, but what the concentration above it costs you in a bad month.
The line that names no country
A declared table beats a borrowed one and is still not a photograph of your shelf. One ragged edge deserves naming: 1.9 per cent of the chocolate column sits under a statistical heading that names no country at all.
Two further limits travel with any customs table. It counts value at the border rather than cartons on a shelf, so a column can swell on price alone. And it records where a consignment was dispatched from, not necessarily where the food was made.
Where Türkiye sits, and the odd part of it
On the same figures Türkiye is seventeenth in chocolate at 0.14 per cent and sixteenth in sugar confectionery at 0.11 per cent. Small shares, and nothing is gained by dressing them up.
The odd part is the ordering: the higher place falls on the column that is more tightly held, which says the lower rungs are contested by a long thin tail, not by a second serious origin. What that position is worth is narrower than a share — it is not zero. Goods from Türkiye already clear here, so the route and the document chain are lanes in use.
An exposure reading, not a forecast
The honest use of this table is to size exposure: one origin above eight tenths of both columns means a single production schedule and a single route set most of what reaches your shelf, and a bad week upstream arrives in both columns at once.
A second supplier does not replace that. It is cover: another range, another schedule, and a sea leg reaching your own coast from Mersin — about three hours by road from our factory in Gaziantep — rather than an overland finish across the region.
Turning two columns into a priced list
A table shows where the risk sits; it cannot say what a carton costs. Send the lines you want priced — chocolate, dragées, Turkish delight, wrapped confectionery, spreads in jars — with the format, quantity and delivery point for each.
The answer comes back line by line: specification, net weight, case and pallet figures, and the delivery term — FCA Gaziantep, FOB Mersin, CIF or DAP. Chocolate lines are quoted in a reefer through the warm months while Turkish delight and dragées ride dry; a vegetable-fat coating is called a compound or a glaze, never chocolate. Couverture, bulk chocolate by the kilo, raw nuts, baklava, halva and tahini are sourced on request, with composition and format confirmed first. Certificates are issued for our factory, and the offer states what applies on the day. One container mixes as many lines as you like — tell us which ones.
Are these declared import figures or borrowed ones?
Declared. This market reports its own imports to the international trade database, which several markets in the region do not, so the table can be quoted with a steadier hand than a mirror reading assembled from other countries’ export filings. The declared 2024 figures are 16,836,606 US dollars of chocolate and 23,025,683 US dollars of sugar confectionery. The limit worth naming is that 1.9 per cent of the chocolate column sits under a heading that names no country at all.
Well over eight tenths of both columns come from one neighbour. Why look at Türkiye?
Not to displace that source — to stand beside it. On the declared figures 85.4 per cent of the chocolate and 89.6 per cent of the sugar confectionery share one origin, so one production schedule and one route decide most of what you are able to offer. Note also that Germany, Poland and India appear below it, so origins from outside the region clear here as routine. A second source changes the range you can offer, shortens the chain between the factory floor and your warehouse door, and puts price per line, case weight, delivery term and document set into one written offer.
Türkiye is seventeenth and sixteenth on these columns. Is that share too small to matter?
The share is small and we will not inflate it: 0.14 per cent of the chocolate column and 0.11 per cent of the confectionery column. What matters is that it is not zero, because a lane already in use means the paperwork behind it has been done here before rather than invented for you. The way to test it is a list rather than a table — the lines, the formats, a quantity and a delivery point, answered in writing, line by line.
