Magazine: A rollercoaster ride to Turkey

Hungary’s agri-food export to Turkey has been rather hectic in the last 15 years: in 2001 it represented a value of only EUR 3 million, which grew to EUR 116 million by 2012 but in the following years it was decreasing again. However, a new chapter started in 2015, when in the first half of the year our beef cattle export elevated from EUR 205,000 to EUR 16.5 million in value (from 54 tons to nearly 4,000 tons in volume) – live beef cattle’s share from our export was 57 percent in this period. We also exported more poultry meat, frozen and fresh vegetables, jam and mineral water in this time period; our pet food export to Turkey represented a value of EUR 1.6 million.

Earlier in the 2000s 85-95 percent of our export was cereals, but by 2008 this share dropped to 50 percent; Hungary’s live cattle export gained significance in 2010 when we exported more than EUR 54 million worth of cattle to Turkey – 39.2 percent of the country’s live cattle export in that year; in 2011 we sold 72 percent of our cattle export in the Turkish market. Unfortunately later Turkey’s trust in the quality of Hungarian cattle diminished and it couldn’t be rebuilt overnight. It had to be done though, as Turkey is a very important market for Hungary’s beef cattle sector, to the extent that the country’s cattle stock started growing thanks to the Turkish market demand. Since the current government is very much in favour of supporting livestock farming, foreign markets such as Turkey are key if we want the sector to make progress.