Ferrero: stop buying Turkish hazelnuts after price boom

The year 2025 is set to be a black year for hazelnuts, grappling with a fshort harvest crisis due to the weather, after a few years that had already seen minus campaigns. It is precisely the shortage of the product, which also seems to have triggered speculative spirals, that seems to be souring relations betweenFerero and hazelnut traders in Turkey. This was reported by the Financial Times in its online edition, explaining that the confectionery group has suspended purchases after the price of Turkish hazelnuts almost doubled since the beginning of the summer, when a spring frost and a pest epidemic reduced the available quantity.

Ferrero - recalls the Financial Times - consumes about a quarter of the world's hazelnut production and has been forced to draw on its own stocks and source from Chile and the United States.
The price of natural hazelnuts has risen from about $9,000 per tonne in June to $18,000. "This year we have a very wide coverage, we are not in a hurry to buy," explained Marco Botta, general manager of Ferrero Hazelnut Company, the group's in-house hazelnut sourcing and processing division, to the Financial Times.

Against the current crisis, Ferrero has recently launched the Hazelnut Agronomy Program promoted together with EIIs (European Institute of Innovation for Sustainability) and Conaf (National Council of Agronomy and Forestry Doctors) to relaunch the Italian hazelnut industry

According to estimates, Turkish hazelnut production could fall to 500,000 tonnes or less from the 600-700,000 tonnes produced in a normal year, almost two thirds of the world supply. Estimates that, according to the Fiskobirlik, Turkey's hazelnut sales association, quoted by the Financial Times, could be revised even further downwards, to under 300,000 tonnes. A late frost in the eastern part of the Black Sea and an infestation of the Asian hazelnut bug, known locally as the 'sputnik', are putting the harvest in crisis.