Major Turkish produce company Aksun is set to open the country's largest fruit and vegetable packhouse in October, as growth continues to soar.

Aksun international trade coordinator Esra Soyleyen

The facility in Tarsus, on the country's southern Mediterranean coast, will handle all produce grown by the citrus-focused entity.

Speaking to www.freshfruitportal.com at last week's London Produce Show, Aksun international trade co-ordinator Esra Soyleyen said the company had been growing at around 20% annually.

"We have been in this sector for more than 30 years and this will be the biggest investment for us," she said.

"The old packhouse is not suitable. It's too old and so instead of paying money to fix it, we just decided to make this new investment."

The plant will feature more than 40 cold rooms and six pre-cooling rooms, within the 25,000 square meters closed area. A fleet of 63 reefer trucks will ship the produce from the facility, coordinated by the on-site logistics center.

To achieve the best design, the company held meetings with Spanish and French architects and visited several packhouses with the engineers.

Aksun grows 47 different kinds of fruit and vegetables, with citrus representing around two-thirds of total production. Other fruits include pomegranates, figs, melons, and stonefruit.

Soyleyen said this summer season had got off to a tricky start, as weather conditions in Spain meant the hispanic country was able to beat Turkey into the European market.

"Normally Turkey should begin one or two weeks before Spain, but because of the changing of the weather they have had more sun than Turkey, so now things are changing with fruits," she said.

"This season they started peaches, nectarines, even watermelons earlier than us. This is the first time that's happened.

"Right now we are also in the market and normally we need to get higher prices in the first 10 days, but now with Spain we’ve started with lower prices just to be competitive with them."

www.freshfruitportal.com