The current crop sun dried tomatoes has finished long time ago therefore all eyes turned into new crop developments.

Unfortunately, the bad weather conditions are effecting new crop sun dried tomatoes in a negative way. The continuous rains and hails over the growing areas damaged the plantation too much. Especially, the effective hails destroyed almost all fields at Bergama region where a big part of new crop sun dried tomatoes was growing. The plantation has to be done again which will postpone the availability of fresh tomatoes for sun drying by minimum 2 weeks time. Late arrival of fresh tomatoes to the market may create high prices during July 2011.

We have forecasted fresh tomatoes price in the range of 0,20 – 0,25 TL/Kg levels before June 2011 however the picture is changed so much due to heavy rains and hails at Izmir and Manisa fields. Our estimation is revised as 0,30 TL/Kg at the moment and we even couldn’t start offering new crop bulk tomatoes yet due to continuous problems. There are four main growing areas where Turkey gets %95 of the tomatoes crop which are Bergama, Menemen, Manisa and Izmir. We usually start with Bergama harvest for sun drying around 5th of July every year however Bergama is totally destroyed this year due to rains and hails therefore the first products will be very expensive. In conclusion, 2 of 4 main growing areas are heavily damaged at the moment. Turkey will have a limited crop for the upcoming season again under current conditions. The big heat difference between daytime and nighttime also started some sicknesses in the fields which will effect the new crop quantity in a negative way.

Ramadan will create some problems during August - September 2011 where all buyers will be expecting prompt shipments from the new crop product. Everywhere in Turkey like factories, ports, customs, etc... will be closed between 26.08.2011 and 05.09.2011 and the productions at the factories will be very slow during August which will effect the supply of the product to the market in a negative way. All buyers are waiting for the cheaper new crop fruit comes into the market during August therefore the slow supply of the product may push the prices of the first shipments up.

US$ currency is increased to the levels of 1,63 against TL this week. The subject level is supporting export prices in a positive way so the tendency of the currency will have a major effect on sun dried tomatoes prices in the coming days.

We usually start offering new crop sun dried tomatoes by the beginning of June every year. However there are some negative developments caused by the unsuitable weather conditions on crop 2011 tomatoes therefore we decided to start offering new crop tomatoes by the middle of July 2011 just to be able to give correct and logical prices to our customers. Please wait for our new crop pricing to book our usual businesses together.

We are also at your assistance for all your needs on “Oven Roasted Semi Dried Tomatoes” as we are the market leader in Turkey for this article.

Looking forward to hear from you soon.