Esra Soyleyen, Aksun
“Turkey is back in the fresh produce game and stronger than ever” Turkish produce has come a long way and is ever expanding in the German market. Speaking with Esra Soyleyen, managing partner at Aksun, she states that there were issues with quality in the past, but the Turkish produce and the method of cultivation has significantly improved. To ensure Aksun keeps growing, the company has made some investments in their machinery. GETTING TURKISH PRODUCE BACK IN sure. This is more then 70 per cent of our GOOD GRACES WITHIN THE GERMAN total export volume, but there are some MARKET other products that are growing signifiTurkish products had a bad reputation with cantly. These products are pomegranates, German retailers for a while, because of black figs, and kiwis.” the pesticide issues many years ago. After that period, most of the Turkish products INVESTMENTS TO IMPROVE QUALITY were distributed on the wholesale market. EVEN FURTHER “As Aksun, we’d like to change the impres- Aksun has been growing in a steady pace sion that exists, as a lot of action has been for years, and Soyleyen says that as of taken on the Turkish side and Turkey has five years ago, they are one of the largbecome one of the strongest fruit and veg- est pomegranate exporters: “We export etable suppliers in the world, with full over 7,000 tons of pomegranates, includtraceability and food safety conditions. To ing conventional and industrial lines. We “We’ve also just finished the new pomesum up; Germany is one of the biggest tar- bought our first machine three years ago granate cold room; 14 cold rooms with a get markets for Aksun and we would like and are now ordering the second auto- capacity of 4,800 tons of storage. To add to expand our volumes in the region.” mated pomegranate line, with an optic to our investments, we’re close to making scanner, and are nearly finished setting it a deal for a new apple and kiwi packing “Our offering to the German market up. So, we are planning to start the 2023 line as well. And for the near future we’ve includes citrus (lemon, grapefruit, orange, pomegranate season by adding this new already started to work on a new product and mandarin), pomegranates, kiwi, packing line for poms into our packhouse. and new citrus packing lines that work watermelon, figs, sugar apricot, sultana Hopefully this will also help us to expand autonomously, because labour and havgrapes, cherry, quinces, and some vegeta- our volume as well as improve the quali- ing a single standard on quality will be bles depending on shortage. For instance, ty, because this new line will have a more the key in the coming years. On the oththis season there was a tomato shortage in modern scanner system to catch possible er hand, our Research and Development Europe. Our strongest product is citrus for internal issues like Alternaria.” Department is continuously doing trials
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