Whose bookkeeping this actually is
A mirror table is other people’s accounts. Each exporting country files what it sent, and the sum stands in for an import statement nobody here published. The arithmetic is sound; the coverage is not. A partner reporting late, partially or not at all drops out, and every share moves with it.
Nor is there a second reading to check it against: of 859 English phrases measured here, 16 cleared the threshold, about 700 searches a month, the wholesale and import part of it zero; French returned 165 and one, at 40.
The chocolate column: one long-haul name, two nearer ones
1,145,967 US dollars a year is a small column, and its shape says more than its size. Belgium holds 34.8 per cent: long-haul branded stock, bought on a name the shopper already knows. Kenya follows at 14.5 per cent from far closer, Türkiye third at 13.03.
Third place on a column this small is pallets rather than a programme. What it establishes is that the route works, the documents clear and the product has been accepted here — a different starting point from nothing.
The sweet column is the big one, and two origins hold it
Sugar confectionery is the larger column by a wide margin, 6,474,966 US dollars, and it is close to a two-origin shelf: Kenya holds 64.1 per cent and India 31.1, almost all of it between them. Belgium is distant at 1.8 per cent and Türkiye fifth at 0.77.
A decimal that small is not a position but an absence with a number attached. The question is not how to displace the two origins holding that column, but what a second line is worth where the buyer has almost no choice of origin.
Why one market produces two opposite tables
Part of it is the product. Boiled sweets, jellies and wrapped candy travel dry, tolerate heat and sell on format and price, so a nearby origin survives a long road leg. Chocolate wants temperature control, and arrives from far away or from somebody who imported it first.
The rest is how each is chosen: chocolate on brand, sweets on price per carton. Which is why naming stays exact — a vegetable-fat coating is a compound or a glaze on the pack and the data sheet, never chocolate, and in the European Union it cannot be labelled chocolate at all.
The journey neither column records
No sea leg ends here. The last stretch is a road one out of a regional port, through a transit movement and an inland customs office; the importer holds the registration and your clearing agent files the transit. That leg, not the sea freight, sets the landed cost.
It also lights up the regional name atop the sweet column: a carton imported once, sold once and driven over a border carries a margin and a handling step at each stop. A mirror table cannot prove any particular carton travelled that way, and we do not present it as proven.
Turning a column into a container
A table this size will not carry a standing monthly programme, and saying so is cheaper than quoting around it. What it carries is a planned load for your selling seasons: chocolate, dragées, Turkish delight, wrapped confectionery and spreads in jars in one load, the minimum per line not per container (mixed container).
Send the references you want priced, the format for each, a quantity and your delivery point. The offer comes back line by line: ingredients and allergens, net weight, case and pallet data, delivery term — FCA Gaziantep, FOB Mersin, CIF or DAP, Mersin about three hours from our factory by road (
How firm are the figures on this page?
They are mirror figures for 2024 and we label them as such. Rwanda does not report its own imports, so the 1,145,967 US dollars of chocolate and 6,474,966 of sugar confectionery are what the rest of the world recorded as exports here. A partner reporting late or partially moves every share in the table, and nobody outside the customs houses knows by how much. Read the ranking as a direction of travel rather than a settled total.
Türkiye is fifth at 0.77 per cent of the sweet column. Where do you actually compete?
Not on a plain boiled sweet sold by the carton against origins holding 64.1 and 31.1 per cent of that column, and we would rather say so than quote and lose. Where a load from Gaziantep earns its place is in dragées and coated nuts, Turkish delight, chocolate-coated lines and printed gift formats — and in the chocolate column, where the same mirror table already puts Türkiye third at 13.03 per cent.
Can you quote couverture, bulk chocolate, raw nuts, baklava or tahini?
Those sit outside the range: they are sourced on request, and we confirm composition and format before quoting rather than listing them as ours. The same applies to dried fruit, cocoa, halva and empty packaging. Certificates are issued for our factory, and the origin documentand the rules that apply are stated in the offer as they stand on the day.
