Turkish Cut Flowers Exporters Association Chairman Ismail Yilmaz spoke to the press about the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on the floriculture industry.
Ismail Yilmaz: “Due to the virus outbreak, our growers had to stop their exports to many countries, including the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, our two main export destinations. Royal FloraHolland had stopped accepting flowers for auction as of the start of this week.
The demands in European markets have gone down to almost zero as everyone is at their homes for isolation. Airfreight has completely stopped as our government banned all incoming and outgoing flights.
There are around 500 hectares of cut flower greenhouses in Antalya, most of them used for carnation production. It is hard to estimate the size of the financial loss but I believe at least 100 million stems of flowers will go to waste and our growers will lose nearly 20 million USD of export revenue.
The season ends at the beginning of July so it looks like our growers won’t earn any money this season. That’s why we believe the government should instruct the banks to postpone the repayment of loans for 1 year instead of 3 months as they have announced last week.”
Source: Yeni Safak