Turkey Cold Chain Logistics Market Trends

Horticultural production, including fruits, vegetables, and flowers, has been emerging as a major economic activity in Turkey. The diverse ecosystems make it economically possible to grow a wide range of horticultural crops. Turkey is one of the largest producers of hazelnuts, cherries, figs, apricots, and pomegranates. The country also produces quinces, watermelons, cucumbers, green peppers, lentils, pistachios, apples, tomatoes, eggplants, olives, tea, chickpeas, sugar beet, almonds, onions, lemons, grapefruit, cotton, and barley.

Turkey has a large domestic market of 85 million people, with more than 15 million living in Istanbul. Therefore, despite Turkey being one of the world's largest exporters of fruits and vegetables, the domestic market is also extremely important.

It is not surprising that recently Turkish farmers have started investing in variety renewal and raising product quality standards to be able to export the maximum outside our region, focusing primarily on India and Southeast Asian countries, the European Union, and rich countries of the Middle East.

An important aspect of state regulation is ensuring temperature regimes by all participants in the fruit and vegetable business when transporting, for example, berries and mushrooms. Although other fruits and vegetables are transported and sold in wholesale markets without refrigeration, the requirement to refrigerate even a limited range is a huge step compared to current practice in the fruit and vegetable markets of the Caucasus and Central Asia, where most retailers violate the temperature regimes.