The grain industry, which closed last year with an export of 9 billion 156 million dollars, focused on exports with high added value in the new period. The industry, which focuses on production and employment, participated in ISM, one of the world’s largest food fairs, held in Germany, with 85 companies. Kazım Taycı, Presidential Candidate of IHBIR and Chairman of the Board, Tayaş Gıda, stated that the ISM fair has great importance in terms of target markets in exports.
“We will not sell products sitting down”
Kazım Taycı emphasized that the biggest aim of ISM is to contact customers from all over the world, he said, “Our fair industry has become a meeting point with our customers, not finding customers. IHBIR covers 28 percent of all Turkish exports in the sector. All of Turkey has an export of 9 billion dollars. 2.5 billion dollars of this belongs to IHBIR. 2 billion dollars of this is made up of confectionery, confectionery products and food preparations. We have an export of approximately 800 million dollars in sugar and cocoa products to Europe. Europe is both the largest producer and one of the largest consumers of this business. I believe that anyone who makes high-quality products in sugar, cocoa and pastry products will expand their markets. We need to turn crises into opportunities. We will not sell products sitting down, we will go to see that market on the spot and explain our activities. For example, the Chinese market has huge potential and has a population of more than 1.5 billion and an interesting growth trend. Today, we are talking about a wealthy segment, which we can say is over 250 million a+. In comparison, the American and European markets are more saturated markets. Hopefully, when we come to the management, the most important point we will tell all our producer and exporter friends will be that we have the opportunity to sell products all over the world. First of all, we all need to get rid of the markets where we are stuck.”
Exporting to 140 countries
Stating that Tayaş Gıda is a company that exports to 140 countries with 57 years of experience, Taycı said, “We have 5 distributors in Korea. We are a company that exports the most from Turkey to this country. In confectionery and cocoa products, we are the company that exports the most to Japan, Korea, China, Thailand and Taiwan. Worldwide, we have over 300 distributors. The number of countries our industry exports to is 75… We talk about the Far East and South America at every opportunity because these are difficult markets and the export unit value is high. But this business is not something that can only be done by selling products to Iraq, Lebanon and Algeria. We also need to sell to Argentina, South America and Asia.”
Referring to the importance of new export markets, Kazım Taycı said, “It’s not just going to some special market and saying ‘buy my product’. We worked with an observer for almost two months to start selling to Japan. They examined everything from our glass, to our light, to our electrical wiring. Since there is a risk of dust on it, they wanted no horizontal cables or anything like that in production. After hard work, we started to sell products to Japan. We need to show ourselves more in these markets. We want to reap the fruits of the advantage we have gained from these areas as a whole sector.”
