Sourcing & Wholesale
Gaziantep food brands in Canada: what Zer Group brings across the border
Gaziantep, in Türkiye's southeast, is the city Türkiye itself treats as its food capital — famous for pistachio and pepper cuisine and an exacting pickling and preserving tradition. The one Gaziantep brand we bring into Canada is Zer Group, a food manufacturer and exporter founded there in 1991, and its products reach Canadian buyers the same way the rest of our catalogue does: by the case, on a written quotation, with no list prices published.
This guide introduces Zer as a brand, what it actually ships into our catalogue, and — honestly — the famous Gaziantep foods that aren't part of that range.
For a Canadian buyer, the useful takeaway isn't just what the city is famous for — it's which of that fame we can actually back up with a named, verifiable supplier, and which parts of the reputation belong to producers we don't yet carry.
Zer Group, the brand behind the products
Zer Group's story began in 1991 with Selçuklar Dış Ticaret, an international trade company; food production started in 2002 with the Zer Yağ Sanayi (Zer Oil Industry) plant in Gaziantep. The group now operates five production plants across Türkiye — including Gaziantep for edible oils, sauces and condiments — employs more than 2,000 people, and exports to 39 countries, ranking among Türkiye's top 100 exporters for a decade running. It holds Halal, ISO 9001, ISO 22000 and ISO 27001 certification and HACCP compliance, alongside its own accredited testing laboratory.
That's the profile of a serious food manufacturer, not a boutique importer's house label — which is part of why we name Zer Group openly on every product rather than folding it into a generic "imported olives" listing.
The group's other plants — in Aydın (table olives, tomato paste, canned foods), Akhisar/Manisa, Batman and Bursa Karacabey — feed the same export network, and stated capacities on the production side run into the hundreds of tonnes a day for edible oils and margarine alone. None of that scale is visible from a single jar on a shelf, but it's part of why a food-safety-minded buyer can treat Zer as a genuine manufacturer rather than a repackager.
What Zer brings into our catalogue
Four categories cross the border through Levant Direct today, all shelf-stable and suited to case-based wholesale ordering.
| Category | Products | Format |
|---|---|---|
| Olives | Black olives, light black olives, sliced black and green olives | 170 g vacuum x48; half tins; 370 cc glass x12 |
| Tomato paste | Zer Tomato Paste | 400 g tin x24 |
| Pomegranate sauce | Zer Pomegranate Sauce (pomegranate molasses dressing) | PET bottle x15 |
| Dessert creams | Chantilly — vanilla, cacao, strawberry, banana | 150 g sachet, x12 box |
What Gaziantep is famous for that we don't stock
Gaziantep's reputation rests just as much on baklava, pistachios and the region's Antep pepper as it does on olives and tomato paste — and none of those are in our visible catalogue today. We'd rather name the gap than let a search term imply a range we don't carry. If your business needs any of those lines specifically, raise it as a sourcing request on your inquiry; we can tell you plainly what's available and what isn't. In the meantime, our Hamdan baklava mix and crushed red hot pepper cover adjacent roles from other houses in the catalogue, and baklava mix for food service, explained goes into that product specifically.
That gap is worth stating for a simple reason: a search for "Gaziantep food brands" is often really a search for pistachio baklava specifically, and we'd rather a buyer know upfront that our Gaziantep line is olives, paste, sauce and dessert creams — not the confectionery side of the city's reputation — than land on this page expecting one thing and finding another.
Who buys Zer's range in Canada
Turkish and Levantine grocers, restaurants building a Gaziantep-style menu, and specialty retailers stocking a Mediterranean shelf all draw on the same four categories. The Turkish restaurant pantry: Gaziantep lines for the GTA covers the kitchen side of that range station by station, and Turkish grocery wholesale in Toronto covers the retail shelf specifically — this page is the brand-level introduction both of those build on.
Ordering across Canada
Because every Zer product in our catalogue is shelf-stable, ordering isn't limited to the GTA — we quote buyers across Canada on the same terms, with delivery specifics confirmed on the quotation. Add the lines and quantities you want to one inquiry and a written quotation comes back, typically within a business day; see how inquiry ordering works. For the wider geography behind all eight of our supplier houses, including Zer's, see from Amman, Gaziantep and Cairo: how goods reach the GTA.
A first order doesn't need to cover all four categories at once — a grocer might start with the olive range alone, a restaurant with tomato paste and pomegranate sauce for the kitchen, and expand into the dessert creams once the rest of the line has proven itself on your shelf or menu.
Related questions
Is Zer Group actually based in Gaziantep?
Yes — Zer Group is a Gaziantep-based Turkish food manufacturer, founded there in 1991 with food production beginning in 2002. It now operates five plants across Türkiye and exports to 39 countries.
Do you carry Gaziantep baklava or Antep pistachios?
Not directly from a Gaziantep producer in our visible catalogue — our baklava mix comes from Hamdan for Foods, a Damascus-origin house. Gaziantep-specific lines can be raised as a sourcing request on your inquiry.
Can businesses outside the GTA order Zer's products through you?
Yes — everything Zer ships into our catalogue is shelf-stable, so we quote buyers across Canada on the same basis, with delivery details confirmed on the quotation.