On March 9th 2023, the hazelnut exporter associations received the latest report from the agronomist’s team that has been doing harvest estimates for the Black Sea hazelnut exporter association for more than 10 years.
Each season, they make 3 rounds in the same orchards and even in the same branches. The difference in their study is that they do this prediction calculation differently for all sub-varieties.
Every end of February/beginning of March, they count the flowers. In May before the INC congress, we count the flowers which become fruits and finally in July, we count the nuts.
This season, they toured the orchards, from February 16th to March 8th. They visited 90 villages in 14 towns and observed a total of 478 orchards and a count of 1448 tree branches.
The counting was done with the assumption that 75% of the flowers will become nuts. So basically 25% won’t go crazy or fall off due to weather or other conditions like bugs, disease, etc.
They calculated about 540,000 tons in the Eastern Black Sea region and 305,000 tons for the Western Black Sea region, a total of 845,000 tons in hull.
While this is only a calculation based on the count of the flowers and not with the count of the nuts themselves, it can be considered a good sign for the upcoming harvest if everything goes well after that until harvest time.
Election: The upcoming elections are also very important for the hazelnut industry, both in Turkey and abroad. As you may have heard, the elections will take place on May 14th, if they are not concluded, the 2nd round will take place on May 28th. Thus, we will most likely have a new policy on hazelnuts in Turkey, whether current or new. Because, as we are going to approach next season with more than 150 tons of inshell hazelnut stock, the new government must change the current policy for more sales and less stock.
Currency: USD and EUR are both undervalued based on current inflation in Turkey. There must be a correction, but it can only be after the election because now they prefer to put pressure on the currency until the election. This cannot be sustained because Turkey is losing a lot of exports to competition for all kinds of goods and imports are increasing more and our trade deficit ends up increasing.
Ferrero’s competition agency case is still ongoing and we could also see an effect in their purchasing policy next season.
If that crop really gets bigger or around 800,000 tonnes, that would also show us that the crop is getting bigger and bigger and it’s all thanks to better farming operations in the orchards, so there’s a real increase in the productivity of Turkish hazelnuts. . And that could continue as we see more and more growers willing to return to their orchards as they see others earning much more than them.
Market: There was little reaction to this news, but it’s safe to say we’ve seen more sellers, we haven’t seen much price difference yet, as many hold certain stocks with some value in their hand . TMO may not be able to make second round sales from its stock as the current market is currently below its selling prices and it is unlikely to offer lower prices in the market.
Until the new harvest, we believe that election results and currency movements will be more effective on prices and also, for sure, on new demands. Other origins should also prepare for more competition from Turkey in the coming season.
Export: Total recorded export: 186,498 tons for crop year 2022 (from September 1, 2022 to March 10, 2023), it was 229,534 tons for crop year 2021 and 168,532 tons for crop year 2020. We expect that the total export by the end of the season will be around 290-300,000 tons.
This week, the Hazelnut Exporters Associations of Blacksea and Istanbul will jointly hold B2B meetings in New Delhi, India. There will also be a presence at the AAHAR exhibition. India does not import many Turkish hazelnuts yet, in the coming years there will be more promotion activities in India and we hope to increase the export of Turkish hazelnuts to this market rapidly.
Source: Sabirlar Findik IHR LTD STI.
