Turkish chocolate, dragées, Turkish delight and confectionery for importers in Senegal

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 columns, two different trades

These are the figures this country declared itself for 2024, and they are the spine of everything else on this page. Sugar confectionery: about 11,880,026 US dollars, with Côte d'Ivoire at roughly 61.1 per cent, Nigeria at 17.1 and France at 8.2, and Türkiye eighth at 0.44. Chocolate: about 7,266,340 US dollars, with France at roughly 41.8 per cent, Italy at 21.6 and India at 8.8, and Türkiye fourth at 8.39. Read them side by side and the shape is obvious. The sweets column is supplied from along the same West African coast; the chocolate column is supplied from Europe across the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. One is a freight-and-price trade, the other is a shelf-and-brand trade, and they are not won the same way.

Why the sugar shelf is regional, and what we will not pretend

A single West African source at roughly 61.1 per cent of the sugar confectionery column, with a second regional one behind it at 17.1, is not an accident and it is not a quality verdict. On a boiled sweet or a plain jelly sold by the kilo, most of the argument is freight and lead time, and a supply line that stays inside the region will beat one that starts in the eastern Mediterranean nearly every time. We are not going to tell you otherwise, and we will not quote to win the commodity kilo. Where confectionery from Gaziantep is actually competitive is the part of the shelf that is not sold on cents per kilo: dragées in colours and printed boxes, chocolate-coated lines, boxed Turkish delight, gift and occasion packs, and own-label runs. Türkiye at 0.44 per cent of that column is not a share to defend; it is a shelf this market has barely bought from Turkish producers at all, which is a different problem from losing ground and a more solvable one.

The chocolate column, and the case for a second source

Chocolate is where Türkiye is already a named source here rather than a newcomer: fourth at 8.39 per cent, behind France at 41.8, Italy at 21.6 and India at 8.8 — and the third and fourth figures sit close enough that the order of them is not the interesting part. What is interesting is that the cocoa-growing country supplying most of the sweets column does not appear among the top sources of the chocolate one. The beans travel one way and the moulded, wrapped, printed pack arrives from somewhere else entirely. For an importer that already buys European chocolate, the practical question is not origin but exposure: one long-haul source, one currency, one freight market and one production calendar. A second origin quoted in writing, with case weight and lead time per line, is an ordinary commercial precaution, and that is the only shelf-share argument this page makes.

The wholesale request, in five spellings

The entire buying-side search volume we measured here is 150 a month, in French, and it is one request written five ways — the phrase for a food wholesaler, at 30 searches each. In English it is zero. Read plainly, the few people searching at all want a general food wholesaler rather than a confectionery importer, which says the confectionery buying in this market happens by phone, by referral and at trade meetings, not through a search box. We have taken that as the brief for this page: it is not written to rank, it is written so a buyer who already has our name can decide, in one sitting, whether the way we work fits the way they buy.

Dragées and the wedding shelf

The clearest on-range signal in the French count is the wedding table. The phrase for wedding guests runs at 140 searches a month, the word for dragée at 70, and the wedding-dragée request appears in three spellings at 30 each. That is consumer demand rather than a purchase order, but it points at a part of the shelf that moves on a calendar rather than on a promotion. Sugared almonds and chocolate dragées are quoted in kilo cartons, in bags and in printed boxes, in the colours the occasion trade asks for. Colour is a production run rather than a picking decision, so the minimum per colour and the lead time are stated per line in the offer, and seasonal quantities are quoted ahead of the season instead of during it.

Loukoum, in the word this market already uses

Turkish delight does not need translating here — the French word for it is searched 50 times a month on its own, which is small in absolute terms and large as a signal, because it means the product does not have to be explained before it can be sold. It is also the easiest line to start with: it travels dry, it holds up on a counter, and it sells both boxed for a gift and cut by the kilo for a sweet counter. We quote plain and nut-filled lokum, rolls, chocolate-covered lokum and printed retail boxes, with the format and the case weight stated per line. If you are matching a format you already stock, describe it — cube or roll, pistachio or walnut, boxed or loose — and we confirm our closest line before quoting rather than sending something approximate.

The pastry words, and the one English phrase on range

Most of the English volume counted here is not confectionery at all, and it is worth saying what it is. Eclairs at 260 searches a month, profiteroles at 170 and pain au chocolat at 110 are fresh pastry — French pastry vocabulary searched in English, baked and sold locally, and it does not travel in a container from anywhere. We do not make it and we will not put it in an offer to look wider than we are. The one English phrase that is genuinely on range is the request for a chocolate box, at 50 a month, and that we can answer: printed retail boxes, mini-bar assortments and mixed gift packs. What else we can put beside a pastry counter is different stock rather than the same stock — wrapped confectionery, tablets and bars, dragées and coated nuts, boxed Turkish delight and spreads in jars.

Sourced on request

Baklava is searched here in three different spellings at 110 a month each, tahini at 70 and halva at 20, and none of the three is ours to promise. Our range is chocolate, dragées, Turkish delight, wrapped confectionery and spreads in jars. Everything outside it — couverture, bulk chocolate by the kilo, raw nuts, dried fruit, cocoa, halva, tahini, baklava and empty packaging — is sourced on request: we confirm composition and format before quoting, and a line that cannot be confirmed stays out of the offer instead of going in with an asterisk. What is confirmed loads in the same container as the rest.

Label, in French

The mandatory information in French, with English alongside where the importer's file or the shelf wants it: the name of the food, the ingredient list with allergens, metric net weight, storage conditions, the importer's name and address, and the date marking. For lines in our standard packs we confirm what the export pack already carries; for own-label lines we prepare the content from our technical data sheet and check your artwork before anything is printed. One discipline we do not bend on any market: a line coated in vegetable fat is named a compound or a glaze on the data sheet, on the pack and in the price list, never chocolate. In the European Union such a coating cannot legally be labelled chocolate at all, and we keep the two words apart everywhere for the same reason — a buyer who finds out the difference at the shelf finds out too late.

Route, paperwork, temperature and payment

This is a coastal market, so a container arrives at a port of entry directly rather than crossing a neighbour first, and the route, the point of entry, the delivery term and the transit are named in the offer for your clearing agent to confirm. Delivery terms quoted are FCA Gaziantep, FOB Mersin, CIF or DAP; our factory is in Gaziantep and Mersin port is about three hours away by road, so consolidation and loading sit inside a short window. Chocolate and chocolate-coated lines are quoted in a reefer through the warm months, while Turkish delight, dragées, jellies and wrapped confectionery travel dry, and both can share one container. From our side you receive the technical data sheet per product, the analysis report per line, our certificates; certificates are issued for our factory — food safety, halal and kosher — and we name the holder and the certifying body, and we do not describe a certificate we have not seen. The origin document and the rules that apply are named in the offer as they stand on the day, and the importer holds the registration and files the consignment. Offers are in US dollars by bank transfer, with a deposit against the order and the balance before the container leaves, settled against the loading photographs.