FreshPlaza: Turkey: Dried tomatoes twice as profitable as fresh tomatoes

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Turkey: Dried tomatoes twice as profitable as fresh tomatoes

Tomato growers in Manisa, İzmir and Elazığ are exploiting a niche in the market by exporting dried "pole tomatoes" -- so called because they are planted and grown around poles. Tomatoes exported to many European countries, particularly the UK and Italy, have many end uses, from pizzas to the production of ketchup. The dried tomato, for example, is 100 percent more profitable than the type used for tomato sauce. In Manisa, where nearly 80,000 tons of tomatoes are produced, more than 5,000 tons are dried and exported.

There are nearly 30,000 hectares of plastic or glass greenhouses and 22,000 hectares of low plastic tunnels, forming a total of 52,000 hectares of greenhouse cultivation in Turkey. The greenhouses range in size from 1,000 square meters to 3,000 square meters. In other countries greenhouses may be as big as 10 hectares (100,000 square meters). Owing to their low efficiency, the relatively large number of greenhouses in Turkey does not translate into a high production capacity. This partly stems from the fact that the areas of land used are made up of so many separate plots, particularly in Antalya where greenhouses are mostly run by families.