What third place actually tells a buyer
The two rankings read differently. 17.0 per cent in sugar confectionery puts Turkish origin among the names an importer here stocks by habit. 7.1 per cent in chocolate, at fifth, says the same origin is present in the cocoa lines but thinner. Inside a $112.9 million table, the distance between those two figures is the whole argument.
It also changes who this is written for: not someone weighing a country, but someone with an incumbent supplier and gaps nobody has named.
Where the shelf is visible online, and the step that adds
Search the category in Arabic and the screen fills with Gulf online retail: finished packs, consumer prices. In French, the results are wholesalers in France and Spain. In English, not suppliers at all but trade-statistics sites quoting the same import figures.
So the assortment a buyer can inspect from a desk is a retail window or a European wholesale rack, both downstream of production. Loading in Gaziantep removes it: production dates, technical file and documents come from the line that ran the goods.
The gap is found item by item, not category by category
"Chocolate" is too coarse a word to audit an assortment. The gap sits a level down: a filled bar the shelf lacks, a dragée in the colour the wedding trade asks for, a malban with a whole pistachio where the incumbent supplies plain, a spread in jars where the range stops at bars.
Two distinctions come before price. A coating made with vegetable fat is a compound or a glaze, never chocolate, and the data sheet says which. Anything outside the finished range — couverture, bulk chocolate by the kilo, raw kernels, dried fruit — is sourced on request, composition and format confirmed before quoting.
Bulk carton or retail pack decides who receives it
The same sweet is two sales depending on how it leaves the line. In a bulk carton it goes to the sweets trade, weighed out at the counter, judged on piece size and price per kilo. In a retail pack it goes to a grocery shelf, where the panel, the unit weight and presentation decide whether it is listed. A gift format is a third case, bought for Ramadan, Eid and weddings and judged on the box.
Format is not a packing choice made at loading: it is a line question with its own minimum, set per line and stated in the quotation.
Whose name is on the pack
Third decision, often the one that decides the margin. In our standard pack we confirm what the export pack already carries. Under your own label the content is drafted from our technical data sheet, checked against your artwork, and nothing is printed withoutwritten approval.
Either way the mandatory information is prepared in Arabic, with English alongside where the shelf wants it: name of the food, ingredients with allergens, net weight, storage, date marking, and the importer named on the pack — the field a reused panel gets wrong, because it still names the previous destination.
What to send so a line-by-line answer can be written
Four things let us write instead of guess: the lines you stock now and from where; the lines and formats you want quoted, bulk carton, retail pack or gift; the port of entry; and whose brand the pack carries.
The reply comes back per line: specification, ingredients and allergens, net weight, carton and pallet data, minimum. Chocolate lines are quoted refrigerated, the dry lines alongside them in one load (mixed container). We quote FCA Gaziantep, FOB Mersin, CIF or DAP; Gaziantep is about three hours from the port of Mersin. The importer files the entry, and the origin document and the rules that apply are named in the offer.
Turkish sweets are already on our shelf. What would change by buying from Gaziantep?
The step, not the origin. Turkish origin was third in sugar confectionery here with 17.0 per cent in 2023, so the origin is established. What changes is where the goods and the file come from: production dates, technical data sheets and certificates issued for our factory, which ran the line, rather than a set passed along by whoever held the goods last.
Which lines are worth adding if chocolate is the thinner part of our range?
That is answered against what you already stock, not in the abstract. Tell us the lines on the shelf now and we come back item by item — filled bars, dragées, malban with a pistachio centre, wrapped sweets for the counter, spread in jars — with the specification, the format options and the minimum per line.
Can one order mix bulk cartons and retail packs?
Yes, subject to each line's own minimum, which the quotation states. Chocolate and chocolate-coated lines are quoted refrigerated in the warm months, malban, dragée and jelly travel dry, and both halves can share one container.
