Türkiye's Citrus Exports and Mersin's Leading Role

Citrus is one of the few agricultural categories in which Türkiye competes on volume, variety and proximity at the same time. Mandarins, lemons, oranges and grapefruit are grown along the Mediterranean coast between Adana, Mersin and Hatay, where mild winters and irrigation from the Seyhan and Ceyhan basins support a harvest window running from October through May.

The 2025 calendar year set a record. Türkiye exported 1.5 million tonnes of citrus worth USD 1.47 billion, a 41 percent increase in value over the previous year. Mandarins carried the season: shipments rose 34 percent to 944,000 tonnes and generated USD 912.5 million, close to two thirds of all citrus export revenue. Lemons followed at USD 402.4 million, ahead of oranges at USD 96.3 million and grapefruit at USD 65.2 million.

Mersin was the single largest exporting province at USD 696.2 million, more than Hatay and Adana combined. For buyers, this concentration is practical rather than symbolic: packhouses, cold storage, laboratories and container capacity sit within a short drive of the same port, which shortens the interval between harvest and loading.

Demand, however, is concentrated in a small number of markets. Iraq accounted for USD 544.2 million and Russia for USD 461 million, together well over half of the total. Ukraine, Poland and Romania followed at a distance. A buyer entering from Western Europe is therefore not competing for surplus volume; they are competing with established, high-volume relationships.

The 2025/26 crop also arrives uneven. Spring frost cut lemon production by roughly 35 percent and oranges by 15 percent, while mandarin output rose 10 percent. Availability and pricing now differ sharply by product, and a contract drafted on last season's assumptions can fail on volume before quality is ever discussed.

Before committing, verify the supplier's own packhouse capacity rather than brokered volume, residue testing records against the MRLs of your destination market, cold storage and pre-cooling capability, and which party carries cold-chain responsibility under the agreed Incoterms. These are the points where citrus contracts most often come apart.