During the cherry season, a total of 600 tonnes of Salihli cherries (Bing Cherry) will be transported to Oslo by 10 dedicated charter flights operated by Turkish Cargo using A330 freighters. The cherries are destined for 1,600 grocery stories throughout Norway.
The cherries come from cities such as Izmir, Manisa, Isparta, Adana, Konya and Kahramanmaras. They are loaded into air-conditioned vehicles in pallets of five kilograms each, brought to the Istanbul Ataturk Airport, the operations centre of Turkish Cargo, by making use of the trucks. Enplaning, transportation and deplaning operations for the cherries are accomplished in under six hours. The flight takes about three hours.
Cherry exporter Veysel Tuysuz, says: “The most delicious cherries in the world are grown in our country. In the past, our trucks, carrying our cherries to Norway would arrive at the region in six days. Our cherries would become deprived of their quality and become rotten due to the prolonged shipment time.
|Now, we have that period reduced to six hours, and all of our products are sold in the shelves in Norway within six days. On year-on-year basis, we have not only increased our exports by 30 per cent, but also received demands from eight new countries.”
The harvest period continues for three months until August in Turkey.
