Sixth place on the table four times the size

Two tables, one country

Chocolate and confectionery are usually discussed as one shelf. In the Somali import picture they behave as two markets, and the size difference carries the argument. Chocolate arrives at roughly $4.41 million a year; sugar confectionery at $19.05 million.

The share picture inverts with the size. On the smaller table Turkish origin is first with 61 per cent and India follows on 29 per cent — two origins covering most of it. On the larger table Turkish origin ranks sixth, on 2.6 per cent. Same country, same year, opposite positions.

What a mirror figure can and cannot say

One caution belongs before any conclusion. Somalia does not file import statistics, so these are mirror figures: what exporting countries declared as shipments there, added up. Nothing was counted at the arrival end.

Two consequences follow. Goods crossing a neighbouring port and continuing overland can be recorded against another destination, and consignments moving outside formal declaration appear nowhere. The numbers are better read as a floor and a direction than as a measurement — and the gap between the two tables is wide enough to survive that caveat intact.

First place, in the smaller room

Sixty-one per cent is a strong position, and its commercial meaning is exact: on the chocolate side the shelf is already largely supplied from Turkey. Work there is defensive, holding ground against a second origin that carries twenty-nine per cent of the same table.

It also sets the ceiling. Even taking the chocolate table whole, the prize is a four-million-dollar line. The arithmetic next door runs differently: one point of share in sugar confectionery is worth several points in chocolate.

Where the volume is, and who the buyer reads today

So the growth question is not chocolate. It is hard candy, jelly, dragée and lokum — the lines filling a $19.05 million table on which Turkish origin holds 2.6 per cent, behind five other origins.

Part of the reason shows in how the category is searched. Arabic queries fill with Gulf and Saudi online retail; English queries return trade-statistics pages rather than suppliers. Neither surfaces a factory. The shelf a buyer reads is therefore somebody else’s retail window or a regional wholesale layer, each adding a step the goods never needed. A direct container removes that step — no more than that.

Bulk carton, and what the heat decides

Format follows. The sugar lines travel as bulk cartons — hard candy, jelly and dragée by weight, lokum the same way — passed on and re-weighed or repacked nearer the counter. Retail boxes exist, but printing cost lands awkwardly on a price-led table.

Temperature reinforces the split. Chocolate and chocolate-coated lines move at +18 to +20 °C, so that half is quoted refrigerated as the normal case; hard candy, jelly, dragée and lokum go dry all year. On this route the larger table is also the easier load.

What to send so a quotation can be written

Two points are settled before a price is useful. A vegetable-fat coating is a cocoa glaze and is never called chocolate; the quotation states which each line carries, and a jar is a spread. The importer of record files the entry and answers for the description; the origin document and the rules that apply are named in the offer.

Send the lines you want quoted, the format for each, an indicative quantity per line, the port of arrival, and whether the label keeps our standard pack or carries your brand — nothing goes to print without written approval. The reply comes in writing: specification, ingredients and allergens, net weight, carton and pallet data, and the proposed tariff heading. We quote FCA Gaziantep, FOB Mersin, CIF or DAP; Gaziantep to Mersin is about three hours by road (how we work).