Where do hazelnuts come from?

In 2024 Turkey (Türkiye) produced 717,000 tonnes, 59% of the world's 1.2 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Italy followed with 9.9%, then United States (7.2%), Azerbaijan (6.2%) and Chile (6%). The top five account for 89%, 39 countries reported output and 3% came from outside the top ten. World production changed +71% over the ten years to 2024 and +9% on the previous year.

These are nuts in shell; the traded product is kernel, so the two weights are not comparable. Turkish growing runs along the Black Sea littoral from Sakarya and Düzce in the west to Giresun, Ordu and Trabzon in the east, on holdings of a hectare or two terraced into hillsides. Nuts from the eastern provinces, sold as Giresun quality, carry a recognized premium over the Levant grades grown further west.

Everywhere else supplements. Italy grows in Piedmont, Campania, Lazio and Sicily and feeds its own confectionery industry; Oregon's Willamette Valley is the only significant United States region; Azerbaijan and Georgia sit on the same Black Sea climate; and Chile has planted heavily, harvesting counter-seasonally into northern markets.

Turkey (Türkiye) was the largest exporter of shelled hazelnuts (HS 080222) in 2024 with 62% of world export value, ahead of Chile (10%), on world trade of $2.3 billion (CEPII BACI). Germany was the largest importer with 24%.

The in-shell line is far smaller and differently shaped. In 2024 United States led exports with 29% of a trade worth $148.3 million, ahead of Spain (15%), while Italy took 38% of imports.

Almost everything that crosses a border does so as kernel, because shelling at origin drops the weight and because industrial buyers want a graded, sized, often blanched or roasted kernel rather than a nut. The buyers are confectioners: Germany and Italy lead imports as the home of chocolate and spread manufacture, not as eaters of whole nuts.

There is no futures market and no free public benchmark price for hazelnuts, so this site quotes none. The visible anchor is the floor purchase price that Turkey's state agricultural board announces before each harvest, at which it will buy from growers. That announcement sets expectations for the season and the private trade prices around it, while growers otherwise sell to village merchants and to exporters who shell, grade and sell on.

Kernels are then contracted by quality group, by kernel diameter in millimetres and by processing state, whether natural, blanched, roasted, diced or milled to paste, with Giresun quality above Levant. Transactions are reported by trade newsletters and through buyers' tenders rather than any exchange, and because a few confectionery groups take much of the crop, published prices are scarce.

Hazelnut flowers in winter and sets early, so a cold snap in March, or hail later, can destroy a crop months before harvest. Because production sits in one narrow strip of coast, a single weather event moves the world price rather than a regional one.

Turkey's state board declares a purchase price before harvest and buys at it, putting a floor under grower returns and shaping what exporters can pay. When the price is set high, the state accumulates stock that hangs over the following season.

Most kernels end up in chocolate, spreads and pralines, and a few confectionery groups account for a large share of demand, one of them by a wide margin. Their coverage decisions and contract timing move the market more than retail consumption, which changes slowly.

An invasive bug that feeds on developing kernels reached the Caucasus and then the Turkish Black Sea provinces, leaving shrivelled and blank nuts that fail on grade. Control is hard on steep smallholdings, and damage shows up as lost kernel yield rather than lost tonnage.

The crop is picked by hand because the slopes rule out machinery, so wages and the supply of seasonal workers feed straight into cost. It is also bought in lira and sold in dollars and euros, which makes the exchange rate part of the price.

Hazelnut grows as a multi-stemmed bush rather than a tree, suckering from the base, and Turkish groves are managed as clumps of stems renewed by cutting out old wood. It is wind-pollinated and flowers in the depths of winter, which is why a cold snap can end a crop before spring. Bushes bear from the fourth or fifth year.

Nuts fall or are picked in August and September. On the Black Sea terraces this is handwork, done by families and seasonal crews moving along the coast as the crop ripens; in Oregon and Chile nuts are swept from a level orchard floor by machine. They are then dried, because a humid coastal harvest molds quickly.

Shelling, sizing and grading happen in coastal plants. Kernels are sorted by diameter, blanched to remove the skin, then roasted, diced, sliced or milled to paste to order. Aflatoxin testing runs through the whole chain, since slow drying after a wet harvest is exactly what produces it.

Most hazelnuts are eaten inside something else. Chocolate and cocoa-hazelnut spread take the largest share, followed by pralines, nougat, biscuits, ice cream and bakery. Whole roasted kernels and in-shell nuts sold at retail are a small part of demand, which is why the market answers to a handful of manufacturers rather than to shoppers.

By-products are modest but real. Shells are burned for heat and used as mulch and abrasive; the skins removed in blanching are rich in polyphenols and go to extracts and animal feed. Kernels that fail on size or color are milled into paste and pressed for oil, where appearance no longer prices the product.

The chain is short but geographically pinched. Nuts come off terraces in a strip of coast a few hundred kilometers long, pass through village merchants to shelling plants in Ordu, Giresun and Trabzon, and leave through Turkish ports for Italy and Germany. Very little travels far in the shell.

Because kernels are dry and stable the logistics are undemanding: ordinary containers, no cold chain, vacuum packing for long storage. The binding constraints are quality control and aflatoxin certification, which importing countries enforce at the border and buyers audit upstream.

The structural risk is that one coastline, exposed to frost, hail and an invasive pest, supplies most of the world with a raw material its buyers cannot easily substitute. Chile, Azerbaijan and Georgia have expanded partly for that reason, but not yet on a scale that would cushion a Turkish frost year.