Turkey Contact Point Blog

Sugar confectionery plays a great role in Turkish tradition, being widely exchanged as gifts during religious festivals, wedding ceremonies and celebrations. It is also a common present when visiting family or friends. This traditional popularity means sugar confectionery performs much better in Turkey than in many other countries.

However, despite their popularity, traditional confectionery products are strongly challenged by other confectionery products, particularly chocolate confectionery. Chocolate confectionery is one of the most dynamic product in Turkey due to several factors, such as the young and rapidly growing population and their growing demand for chocolate with toys, developing distribution channels, manufacturers’ heavy advertisements, new product developments and increasing multinational investments. The most popular types of chocolate confectionery are countlines, tablets and boxed assortments. Manufacturers have successfully diversified the number and type of products available.

The gum sector is another most dynamic area within confectionery. The Turkish gum market is very competitive, due to presence of powerful local and multinational companies, which have been operating for a long time in the market. Production of sugarised gum, sugar-free gum, functional gum and bubble gum has steadily increased since 2000.

Turkey has the advantage of being self sufficient in one of the main confectionery ingredients-sugar.

Turkey is also in a very advantageous situation due to the monopoly it has in the world production of dried fruits (dried apricots, raisins) and edible nuts (hazelnuts, pistachios). The hazelnut, in particular, is now one of the basic ingredients widely used in the confectionery sector. Hazelnut flour, roasted and sliced hazelnuts are used in the production of sweets, cakes and biscuits. Hazelnut paste is used in the production of chocolate. The special products supplied for direct consumption are hazelnut puree, halva and hazelnut cream.

Turkish pistachios are also used in the production of Turkish delight, halva and chocolate, and Turkish sultanas (raisins) are used in the production of certain cakes, biscuits, and confectionery products. The advantage of being a producer and supplier of many agricultural products combined with high technology has increased the product variety in the industry. Apricots and dried apricots have been used in the production of newly developed confectionery products such as apricot bars, delight and paste in recent years.

Source: IGEME New Publications