Turkey world’s number one flour exporter

Turkey has been the world’s top flour seller over the last five years, making one-third of all flour exports, with 3.6 million tons of flour exports worth $1.1 billion in 2017, an industry group said on Jan. 10.

“Turkey’s flour exports have been growing rapidly over the last 13-14 years, especially in the last five years,” Eren Gunhan Ulusoy, chairman of the Turkish Flour Industrialists’ Federation (TUSAF), told state-run Anadolu Agency.

Ulusoy stressed that Turkey makes around 70 percent of its flour exports to Iraq, Sudan and Syria, as well as Angola, Benin and Somalia.
Over the last decade, the country exported flour to 160 countries, including the United States, China, Japan and Russia, he added.

“Turkey’s 2018 targets are to deepen its market, to raise production capacity and to export four million tons of flour worth $1.25 billion,” Ulusoy said.

The country exports many varieties of flour, including rye, whole wheat, diabetic, pizza, bran, pastry and pasta, he explained.

“Turkey’s annual average of wheat production is 21 million tons, but its consumption is 19 million. The overproduction is used to export flour,” Ulusoy said. He said Turkey produced 22.5 million tons of wheat in 2015 and 20.5 million tons in 2016.

Turkey needs to import wheat to maintain its top seller position, Ulusoy said.

Turkey’s exports in 2017 were the second-highest in the republic’s history, worth $157.1 billion.

Kazakhstan and Germany followed Turkey in world flour exports, according to data from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Observatory of Economic Complexity.