Turkey earns $1.4B in hazelnut exports in 8 months

By Gokhan Ergocun

ANKARA

Turkey sold abroad over 215,000 tons of hazelnuts in the first 8 months of the export season, making a $1.36 billion revenue, a national union of exporters of the nut said Wednesday.

The export volume between September 2017 and April 2018 saw a 24.6 percent jump in the same period from a year earlier, the Black Sea Hazelnut and Products Exporters' Union announced.

Despite the growing sales volume, the value of exports dropped by 4.7 percent over the same period of the previous season, according to the union's statistics.

More than 75 percent of Turkey's hazelnut exports in this period were made to the EU countries, amounting to around $1 billion.

The country exported nearly 236,000 tons of hazelnuts and earned $1.88 billion during the entire 2016-2017 export season.

Turkey is the world's largest exporter of hazelnuts.