Dried apricots: TMO causes discontent

Mundus-Agri. Although the season has been running for three months now, the TMO has still not announced any base prices. This is causing a lot of concern among market players. Moreover, it remains questionable whether the high export target can be achieved by the end of the year.

Better demand situation in the new year?

Turkish market players state that the apricot market is currently extremely quiet. Demand remains weak and with at least 100,000 mt of dried apricots available, traders expect prices to fall in the new year at the latest. Commodity have already declined compared to last week, except for the jumbo variety, which is scarce this season. Export prices remain unaffected so far due to the unstable exchange rates. Here, traders are hoping for an increase in demand at the beginning of the new year, as they reckon that many buyers will need to restock after the holidays.

TMO must act

The President of the Malatya Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Oğuzhan Ata Sadıkoğlu, said that the fact that the TMO has not yet announced a base price for dried apricots, even though three months have already passed since the harvest, is a serious concern for apricot producers in Malatya. Many growers have had to take out loans and now fear that they will only be able to sell their goods at a loss in times of astronomically high energy and production costs. Sadıkoğlu states that farmers expect a "solid base price" and adds: "We expect the TMO to immediately announce the base price in order to eliminate the grievance experienced by our producers and to provide stability in terms of explaining the minimum price in order to avoid similar problems in the future. We believe that our President will not remain uncommited to this issue, which is essential for our city, and that the issue will reach a permanent and definitive solution."

Export target might be too optimistic

Turkish apricot exports in October were around 8,000 mt, which according to market players is not a bad result due to high export prices, but not outstanding either. Last week, exports were 2,052 mt, compared to 1,994 mt in the same week last year. Since the beginning of the season, exports amount to 22,318 mt compared to 28,564 mt in the same period last year. The export target of 40,000 mt set for the end of the year is likely to be difficult to achieve, especially considering that trade is virtually at a standstill in the last two weeks of the year due to Christmas and New Year's Eve.

Successful apricot kernel exports

Not only dried apricots are among Malatya's most important export products, apricot kernels also play a major role. Ramazan Özcan, chairman of the Malatya Commodity Exchange, states that there is an increase in export value here and that the development of the apricot kernel market also depends to a large extent on global almond production. Özcan explains: "Especially in the USA, there is a high almond production this year. Despite this, our apricot kernel exports are doing very well. We exported about 500 mt of kernels in August and 750 mt in September. In the first nine months of the year, we exported 3.314 mt of apricot kernels. We have earned a revenue of 12.56 million USD. Although there is a partial decrease in the amount of exports compared to previous years, there is a significant increase in income. A product that was not very important for the producers in the past, and actually not economically valuable, now provides a strong economic income to meet the production costs."