Sourcing: from a sentence to a specification, and from a specification to comparable offers
What happens
Three of the words in that enquiry are doing no work at all. "Good quality" is not a grade. "One container" is not a quantity until somebody knows the packing unit. "Before Christmas" is a delivery expectation, not a shipment window, and whether it is achievable depends on which port and which sailing. So the first exchange is not about price. It is a short list of questions, and it is the same list the market would eventually ask anyway — better asked now, in one message, than discovered one at a time over three weeks.
What we do
We start from the specification, not from the product name. "Dried apricots" is not a purchase order; "sulphured whole pitted apricots, size No. 4, moisture as per contract, 12.5 kg lined carton, current crop, delivered CFR Hamburg, shipment October" is. Where a buyer does not yet have a written specification — and many do not, especially the first time they buy a product directly rather than through a distributor — we build one out of the questions the trade will ask regardless: type and style, grade or calibre, moisture, treatment, packing unit, crop year, destination and delivery window, and any food safety scheme certification the buyer's own customers demand of them.
With that in hand we go to suppliers in the origins that can serve it. Before an offer ever reaches you, we check the match: does this origin actually produce this grade; is the crop year current or are we being quoted last season's fruit; does the packing format exist or is it being improvised; can the destination's document set be produced for this specific lot. Offers then come back normalised, so that what lands on your desk is three quotations for the same thing rather than three different things that happen to share a product name.
Supplier due diligence runs alongside it, quietly and in every case: company identity and registration, the food safety scheme the buyer expects, references for this specific product and format rather than for the company in general, and the plain consistency test — does what is being offered match what this origin, at this time of year, can plausibly deliver. An offer that is materially better than the market is information about the supplier, not about the price.
Back to our shipment
Say the answers come back: sulphured, whole pitted, size No. 4, 12.5 kg cartons, current crop, CFR Hamburg, October shipment, and the buyer's retail customer requires an IFS certified packing site. That specification can be sourced, quoted and compared. It took one exchange, and it has already removed the two most common causes of a failed first transaction — a mismatch about grade, and a mismatch about when.
Documents that come out of this step
Request for quotation and specification sheet · supplier offer (SCO/FCO) · product specification sheet · sample dispatch note and Certificate of Analysis on the sample · supplier due diligence file.
What the buyer should expect
An offer that names the Incoterm, the packing unit, the shipment window and the crop year. An offer without those four is a number, not a quotation, and it cannot be compared with anything. Expect to approve a sample before a lot is committed — and expect us not to commit one before you have.
Negotiation: aligning the terms that pull on each other
What happens
The offer comes back and there is a number on it, and almost everyone's attention goes straight to the number. It is the wrong place to look first, because the number is downstream of five other decisions that have not been made yet. Move the Incoterm and the price moves with it, because freight is inside it or outside it. Move the point at which the seller is made whole and the seller's financing cost moves, and so does the price. Move the shipment window into the peak season and the freight rate moves. The price is an output.
What we do
We negotiate the commercial package as one object, because its parts are coupled. The Incoterm decides who books and who insures, and therefore what share of the freight sits inside the price. What the buyer's bank will check against decides which documents have to exist and by when. The quality clause decides who carries the risk of a lot that comes in outside specification, and the inspection clause decides whether that question is settled at the load port or at discharge — two answers with very different consequences for who is holding the problem when it appears.
We also negotiate the clauses nobody reads until they need them: quantity tolerance, the allowance against the guaranteed analysis, the claim notification period, the sampling and sample-retention rule, force majeure, governing law and arbitration. It is worth saying plainly why these matter more than they look. Disputes in this trade are rarely about bad faith. They are about tolerance and timing — a moisture reading half a point over, a calibre count slightly outside the band, a claim raised eleven days after discharge when the contract allowed ten. Every one of those is settled in advance or settled expensively.
Our own position in the transaction is agreed at this stage too: whether we act as a commission agent between the parties or as principal buying and reselling in our own name, and how that is remunerated. It goes into the paperwork rather than being left to be inferred from it. Ambiguity about an intermediary's role is a standing red flag in commodity due diligence, and we have no reason to be ambiguous.
Back to our shipment
The buyer wants CFR Hamburg, with the seller booking the freight; the supplier wants FOB İzmir and to be finished with the cargo once it is on board; both are reasonable opening positions. What has to be checked before either is agreed is whether the documents the buyer's bank will demand can actually be produced under the term being proposed. Under CFR the seller contracts the freight and can obtain an on-board bill of lading, so that combination works. Had the buyer asked for EXW while still requiring an on-board bill of lading in the seller's name, it would not have — and the place to discover that is here, not at the bank counter.
Documents that come out of this step
Buyer's order (ICPO) or counter-offer · agreed term sheet or negotiation record · draft commercial terms for the contract · agreed brokerage or agency arrangement.
What the buyer should expect
To be told plainly when a requested combination is unusual or self-contradictory — for example a document the buyer's bank will insist on that the chosen Incoterm does not generate. Expect the terms in writing before the contract is drafted, not for the first time inside it.
Contract: the document everyone downstream has to read
What happens
The contract is the only artefact in the whole transaction that every other party will consult. The bank will read it. The customs authority will read the documents it produces. If there is ever a claim, the surveyor and the arbitrator will read nothing else. And yet in commodity trades it is frequently the fastest-drafted document of all, because by the time it is written both sides feel they have already agreed everything. That feeling is what a contract review is for.
What we do
We align the sales contract between buyer and supplier and check it for the consistencies that decide whether the rest of the transaction works. At minimum, a contract in these commodities carries: product description and style; grade; size or calibre; the quality parameters that will actually be measured; the standard and method those measurements refer to; packing and marking; quantity with tolerance; the Incoterm and named place; the shipment window; the deadline by which the documents must be presented; the full list of documents to be presented; whether inspection is final at loading or at discharge; the claim period; force majeure; and governing law and arbitration.
Then we read it the way the next three parties will read it. The bank asks whether the document list can actually be produced under this Incoterm. The customs authority at destination asks whether the origin evidence matches the tariff treatment being claimed. The surveyor asks which standard the quality is measured against, and on which sample. Where those three readings disagree with each other, the contract gets fixed before signature — which is the only moment when fixing it is free.
There is one habit worth naming because it causes more trouble than anything else in this document: describing quality with adjectives. "Good quality", "premium", "export quality" and "sound, loyal and merchantable" are not measurable, and a clause that cannot be measured cannot be enforced or defended. A quality clause should name a standard, a parameter and a method — and where the buyer's own specification is stricter than the standard, as it usually is, it should say so and attach the specification.
Back to our shipment
The draft says "size No. 4". It should say size No. 4 as defined by count per kilogram and diameter, with the tolerance for out-of-size fruit stated, because "No. 4" on its own means one thing to a Malatya packer and can be argued into meaning something else at a discharge port. It says "moisture max as per standard" — which standard, measured by which method, on which sample. And it lists documents that include a certificate of origin, where what the shipment will actually need for preferential treatment in the EU is a EUR.1. Three lines, each of them a small correction now and a large one later.
Documents that come out of this step
Signed sales contract or SPA · proforma invoice · agreed document list · packing and marking instruction · where applicable, the agency or intermediary agreement.
What the buyer should expect
A contract that names standards and methods rather than adjectives. "Good quality" is not a specification; "Codex CXS 130-1981, whole pitted, size No. 4, defects within the tolerances of the standard" is. Expect the document list in the contract to match, word for word, the list the bank will check against.
Freight: booking, loading and the transport document
What happens
Now the transaction becomes physical, and the cargo starts imposing its own rules. Until this point everything could be adjusted in an e-mail. From the moment a container is stuffed, a large part of the outcome is fixed — including several things that will not be visible until the doors are opened at the other end.
What we do
We organise the freight leg according to the Incoterm agreed in the contract: booking with the line or the forwarder, container type and equipment, the loading plan, insurance where the term requires it, and the transport document issued in exactly the form the contract and the bank require.
The cargo decides much of this, and it decides it differently for each product. Dried fruit and nuts travel ambient on most lanes, and their real enemy is not temperature but moisture and condensation — a container that sweats on a cold night can undo a season's careful drying. Brined table olives are sensitive to thermal shock and depend entirely on seal integrity; a compromised seal is a total loss rather than a quality claim. Bulk olive oil moves in flexitanks, IBCs, drums or ISO tanks, must be protected from light, oxygen and heat throughout, and on long or cold routes needs thermal protection so that it arrives fluid enough to discharge at all. Wooden pallets entering the EU must carry ISPM 15 marking, and a pallet without it can hold a compliant cargo at the border.
We also watch the part of the freight leg that generates cost after the event: the arrival schedule, the free time at destination, and the demurrage and detention clock. A container that arrives before its documents is a container accruing charges every day, and it is one of the most avoidable expenses in the whole chain.
Back to our shipment
The cartons are 12.5 kg, the term is CFR Hamburg, October shipment. The loading plan is agreed before booking rather than after, because stacking pattern and pallet configuration change how many cartons the box takes and therefore what the freight costs per kilo. Loading photographs are taken. The bill of lading is issued on board, in the wording the contract specified, and the original documents are couriered so that they arrive before the vessel does — not after it, which is the sequence that quietly generates a demurrage bill on an otherwise perfect shipment.
Documents that come out of this step
Booking confirmation · packing list and loading photographs · pre-shipment inspection report where the specification calls for one · bill of lading or other transport document · insurance certificate where the Incoterm requires it · ISPM 15 evidence for wooden packing.
What the buyer should expect
To know, before booking, who is responsible for export clearance, who books, who insures and where risk transfers. Under most maritime terms risk passes at the load port even when the seller pays the freight — a distinction that only matters on the day a claim is made, and one we put in writing rather than leave to be discovered on that day.
Analysis and certification: the file the destination will ask for
What happens
Running underneath the whole transaction, from sample to arrival, is a second file made entirely of laboratory results and official certificates. In food commodities this file is not paperwork attached to the trade; for a great many shipments it *is* the trade, because it is the only thing standing between a container and a refusal at the border.
What we do
We organise the sampling and the accredited laboratory analysis, and we follow the official documents through the authorities that issue them. What is required is decided by three things at once: the product, the destination market's rules, and the buyer's own specification — which is frequently stricter than the law, because retailers write their own limits and audit against them.
For these commodities the recurring tests are aflatoxins and ochratoxin A on dried fruit and nuts, pesticide residues across the board, sulphur dioxide on sulphured dried fruit, moisture and calibre on almost everything, salt, pH and drained weight on table olives, and for olive oil the full chemical panel together with the sensory panel that any virgin-grade claim requires in the EU.
Alongside the laboratory work sits the official file: the health certificate, the plant health (phytosanitary) certificate where the product is listed, and the origin evidence. For goods entering the EU from Türkiye, that last point is a frequent and expensive error.
A.TR
covers goods in free circulation under the Customs Union. EUR.1 is the
preferential origin document for agricultural goods — and dried fruit, nuts, table olives and olive oil are agricultural goods. The wrong form means the full third-country duty on a consignment that was entitled to preference.
Some products carry an additional layer. Dried figs and pistachios of Turkish origin are subject to increased official controls at EU entry: official certification with sampling and analysis carried out in the country of origin, entry through a designated border control post, a CHED notification in TRACES, and a genuine probability that the consignment is physically checked. The applicable lists and control frequencies are amended regularly, so we verify them against the current annex for each shipment rather than quoting a figure that ages into a false statement.
Back to our shipment
The apricots are sulphured, so the file needs an SO₂ result as well as the aflatoxin report, and the retail customer's IFS requirement has to be evidenced from the packing site rather than asserted. The EU limit for SO₂ in dried apricots is high enough that compliance is rarely the issue; the label declaration is. Any sulphite content above 10 mg/kg must be declared, and a private label pack that omits it is a recall waiting for an audit. The origin document is a EUR.1. And because the buyer's specification asks for a moisture figure tighter than the standard's, the contract — not the standard — is what the laboratory result will be measured against.
Documents that come out of this step
Certificate of Analysis per lot · pesticide residue report · contaminant reports as required · moisture, calibre and, for olives, drained weight and physico-chemical reports · sensory panel report for virgin olive oil grades · health certificate · phytosanitary certificate · A.TR or EUR.1 · organic certificate where the goods are organic · CHED where the product is under increased official control.
What the buyer should expect
A document set assembled for your destination, not a generic one. Expect us to tell you when a test you have asked for has no regulatory limit behind it — mineral oil hydrocarbons in olive oil are the standard example, written into buyer specifications everywhere while no EU limit yet exists — so that you know whether you are buying compliance or buying reassurance. Both are legitimate. They are not the same thing, and they do not cost the same.
Arrival, and what happens if something is wrong
The container reaches Hamburg, the documents are already there, the free time is known and the clock is being watched. In the ordinary case that is the end of the story: cleared, delivered, closed.
In the case that is not ordinary, the contract has already decided how it goes. Which sample is authoritative. Whether inspection was final at loading or at discharge. Which tolerance applies to the parameter in question. How long the claim window is, and when it started. Who appoints the surveyor and who pays for them. Every one of those was settled in step two, when it cost nothing to settle, precisely so that it does not have to be improvised in step ten when both sides are annoyed and one of them is holding a container they cannot sell.
Our role in a claim is narrow and useful: keep the file complete, keep both sides working from the same set of facts, and keep the conversation on what the contract says rather than on what each party remembers agreeing. Most disputes in this trade are resolved by allowance rather than rejection, and the ones that escalate usually do so because the paperwork was ambiguous, not because somebody acted in bad faith.
Start at whichever step you are on
Not every enquiry starts at step one. If you have a specification, send it. If you have an offer in front of you and want a second reading before you accept it, send that. If you have a contract that is about to be signed, the hour before signature is the most valuable hour in the whole sequence. And if you are a supplier who can produce to a written specification and document it properly, we would like to know which products, which origin and which formats.
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