A table this market filed itself
Two kinds of trade table circulate. One is borrowed: a market that does not report its imports is reconstructed from what every exporting country claims it sent there. The other is declared — as these are, for 2025.
That is the better of the two and it still has edges. A customs record counts what was entered at a border post, so goods crossing a long land frontier informally are outside it. On columns this small, one consignment moves a share by several points.
The sugar column, and the two neighbours holding it
6,513,870 US dollars of boiled sweets, chews, jellies and dragées were entered in the year. Uganda accounts for 52.0 per cent of that, Kenya for 41.3, India for 4.9. Behind those three the column runs out: Türkiye is fifth, at 0.0 per cent once rounded.
Two neighbouring origins hold better than nine tenths of the sweet shelf. Nobody is looking to tear up a corridor that works. The useful question is narrower — what a second line is worth in the month the first one is late.
The chocolate column, and its odd shape
Chocolate is barely a column at all: 117,371 US dollars for the year, ordered nothing like the sweet side. Rwanda leads at 51.7 per cent, Kenya follows at 22.8, Spain holds 21.1 as the one distant origin of any weight. Türkiye is fifth again, at 0.27.
Here the table has a limit: it records the country a consignment was declared from, not the factory that made it. A regional origin heading a chocolate column can mean manufacture next door, or stock that already sat in a regional warehouse. We will not guess which.
Why the two columns are not the same size
The gap is not an accident of taste. Wrapped sweets, chews, sugar-shelled dragées and Turkish delight travel dry, tolerate a warm road and share one box. Chocolate does not: a refrigerated container protects it only as far as the cold chain reaches, which here is not the final delivery point.
It is also why a compound-coated line and a chocolate-coated one are never offered as substitutes. A vegetable-fat coating is named a compound or a glaze on the data sheet, the pack and the price list; in the European Union it may not be sold as chocolate.
The part of the table that is missing: the road
Neither column records how any of it arrived. There is no seaport here: a container is discharged in a neighbouring country and finishes overland under a transit procedure, so the agent on that inland leg matters to your schedule as much as the shipping line does.
So the offer names the delivery term, the port of discharge it is quoted against, the crossing assumed inland and where our responsibility ends. Terms are FCA Gaziantep, FOB Mersin, CIF or DAP; Mersin is about three hours from our factory by road. The rules are national and they move — the offer states what applies on the day.
Turning a column into a carton
A table this size will not carry a standing monthly programme, and we would rather say so. It carries a planned load, mixed across as many lines as you like in one box (mixed container): wrapped confectionery, jellies, dragées, Turkish delight and spreads in jars, chocolate in a small share.
Send the references you want priced, the format for each, a quantity and your inland delivery point. The offer returns line by line: ingredients and allergens, net weight, case and pallet figures, lead time and delivery term, with certificates issued for our factory. Couverture, bulk chocolate by thekilo and raw nuts sit outside that range and are sourced on request, composition and format confirmed before quoting.
Are these figures reliable, or reconstructed from elsewhere?
They are declared here rather than borrowed: a customs office published them, and the year on the record is 2025, which is more recent than much of the region reports. The limits are the ordinary ones. A customs record counts goods entered at a border post, so anything crossing a long land frontier informally sits outside it, and on columns this small a single consignment moves a share by several points. Read the ranking as a direction of travel rather than a fixed order.
Türkiye is fifth in both columns. Why is that an argument for anything?
On its own it is not, and we will not pretend otherwise. Turkish product is a footnote on this shelf — 0.27 per cent of the chocolate and 0.0 of the sugar confectionery after rounding. What the table does describe is shape: Uganda at 52.0 per cent and Kenya at 41.3 hold almost the whole sweet column, so a great many shops restock from the same few hands. The case for loading at origin is not that a neighbour’s price is wrong. It is how many hands sit between the factory and your warehouse, and how much of the arrangement exists on paper before money moves.
Why does the chocolate column look so different from the sweet one?
Partly the product. Wrapped sweets, jellies and dragées travel dry and handle a warm road, so they can be bought nearby without the journey spoiling them. Chocolate needs temperature control, which is why that column is small and why one distant origin, Spain at 21.1 per cent, sits inside it alongside two regional ones. Partly the record: a table names the country a consignment was declared from, not the factory behind it, so a regional share may be manufacture or may be stock imported once already.
