Chocolate, dragées, Turkish delight and confectionery from Gaziantep, for importers in The Bahamas

Six lines, mixed to your list.

Each line travels on its own pallet; the container is mixed. Outside the core range we source on request and load it in the same shipment.

What stays the same on every offer.

Rates and rules change; the quotation states what applies on the day. These points do not change.

Two thirds of the shelf from one neighbour

Of the chocolate and confectionery arriving in The Bahamas in 2024, 67.6% came from the United States. For a buyer that is not first a price question; it is a continuity question. When one lane is interrupted — weather, a port week, a recall at one plant — the whole shelf is interrupted at the same moment, because the whole shelf is on that lane. A second origin on two or three references, the gift box, the dragée and the pistachio line, is the inexpensive version of that insurance, and it is the honest reason to read an offer from Gaziantep.

The shelf in figures, 2024

$8,825,729 of chocolate (HS 1806) and $6,890,296 of sugar confectionery (HS 1704) came in during 2024, about $15.7 million together. Türkiye does not appear near the top of the chocolate side of that record; on the confectionery side it ranks thirteenth. We state it plainly because it sets the frame for everything else on this page: on chocolate nothing has been established here yet, so we quote as the alternative on specific references and let the sample, the specification and the written price do the arguing.

Inside CARICOM, outside the common market

The Bahamas belongs to the Caribbean Community but is not inside the common market, so entry runs on national Bahamian rules rather than a community-wide regime. The practical consequence: a document set assembled for a neighbouring island does not carry over here unchanged, and the importer of record handles clearance and whatever registration or permit a line requires. There is no A.TR movement certificate on this route and no Eurasian regime — those belong to other destinations and add nothing to a Bahamian entry. The offer names the tariff line per product and states what applies on the day of clearance, so the landed cost is settled before the order rather than after it.

Label

An English label: the name of the food, the ingredient list with allergens, the metric net weight, storage conditions, the production and expiry dates and the importer's name and address. One naming rule matters more than it looks. A real chocolate line and a compound or glaze line never get the same word on our documents or on the artwork we check, because a vegetable-fat coating cannot be labelled as chocolate in several markets and a buyer should know which one is in the carton before it lands. For lines in our standard packs we confirm what the export pack already carries; for private label we prepare the label content and check your artwork against it before anything is printed.

The resort, ship and duty-free shelf

In The Bahamas the tourism channel decides the format more than the flavour does. Gift boxes that survive a suitcase, trays and counter displays for the resort shop, single-serve and portion packs for the trolley, the minibar and the amenity tray, and a boxed line for the airport and the cruise port. Boxed Turkish delight, the pistachio roll and chocolate-covered lokum sit naturally on that shelf; sugared almonds and chocolate dragées go by colour for weddings, events and corporate gifts. Case weight and pack count per line are in the offer, so a resort buyer can price the shop and the room at the same time.

Dubai chocolate, from Türkiye

The one consumer phrase with real weight in this market is “dubai chocolate”, at roughly 110 searches a month — more than every business phrase in the market put together. The pistachio and kadayif bar behind it is made in Gaziantep, where the pistachio grows and the kadayif is made, in retail and gift formats in our standard packs or under your brand; pistachio spread in jars, the product most people search for as pistachio cream, travels with it. In absolute terms it is a small number. It is also the only demand in this market that a shopper generated rather than a planner.

Route and temperature

Gaziantep to Mersin is about three hours by road; from Mersin the container sails to Nassau or Freeport, with the transshipment port, the delivery term — FCA Gaziantep, FOB Mersin, CIF or DAP — and the transit time written into the offer. The route crosses the tropics and the islands are warm in every season, so chocolate and chocolate-coated lines are quoted in a reefer year round and compound-coated lines are named as compound, not as chocolate. Turkish delight, sugared almonds, jellies and hard-boiled lines travel dry in the same container.

No search channel, and no local name in the results

Two findings belong together. First, the largest-looking query in the whole Bahamian set turned out to be the brand name of an American food distributor, and it arrived with its own word repeated inside it — somebody's trademark and a planner artefact at once. We dropped it, because in a market this thin that single uncounted line would have doubled the apparent demand. Second, run the trade phrases and not one local domain comes back: “confectionery distributor” returns American wholesalers, “wholesale sweets” returns British ones. That is the current supply chain drawn by its own results — the buyer's counterpart sits in Miami or London, and the goods reach Nassau after somebody else has already imported, warehoused and marked them up. A container loaded in Gaziantep and discharged at Nassau or Freeport takes that step out.

Currency and payment

Offers in US dollars, the currency the trade here works in day to day. Bank transfer only; the deposit and the balance, the stage at which each falls due, and the loading photographs that go with the balance are written into the offer before anything is produced.

Sourced on request

Outside the core range we buy in what your list needs and load it in the same container: couverture and bulk chocolate by the kilo, raw nuts, dried fruit, cocoa, baklava, halva and tahini, biscuits and wafers in bulk, and empty packaging. These are sourced on request; we confirm composition and format before quoting, and the offer names who made each line.