Frequently asked questions

There is one on every enquiry, but it is not a number that can be printed in advance. The smallest workable quantity of a laundry powder line has almost nothing in common with the smallest workable quantity of razor cartridges: one is heavy, low in value per case and cheap to hold, the other light, high in value and tightly allocated. Give the desk the lines, the formats and the destination and it will name the smallest order it can quote properly — usually with the point at which the economics turn in your favour.

Yes, and for a range trial that is normally the right structure. Mixed-brand and mixed-category pallets are ordinary work here rather than a concession granted to small buyers. The one condition is that composition is settled before the offer is issued, because it governs the pick, the build and how the packing list reads to a clearing agent.

Both are functions of the carton you actually buy rather than constants of the trade. Cans, PET, glass, jars, pouches and compressed poly packs all behave differently, and what decides the answer is whether the load exhausts permitted weight before it exhausts cube. A pallet of bottled water reaches the weight ceiling long before the container is full; a pallet of crisps does precisely the opposite. The arithmetic is in our guide to pallets and container loading; your own figures are confirmed on the pro-forma.

When your rotation can absorb one. A groupage part-load costs more per case and moves more slowly, because nothing in a shared box is released piecemeal: it all clears at the pace of the slowest file travelling with it. What it does not do is commit you to anything. A full load gives the lowest unit rate, one seal, one transport document and a single clearance event. Most relationships here begin as pallets of several lines and become containers once it is obvious which of them rotate.

Frequently. Phasing releases against an import licence, a seasonal window or your own cashflow is a normal request. It has to be designed into the offer rather than raised after allocation, because stock held for you is stock not being offered to anyone else.

That the goods were bought inside the single market through a documented commercial chain, and that they are supplied in the packaging the producer sealed — original outer cartons, original artwork, the batch coding the plant printed. It is a statement about where the goods came from and what has happened to them since, not a reassuring adjective. The longer explanation of what EU-sourced means covers the ways the phrase gets stretched elsewhere.

No. Nothing leaves here in packaging other than the manufacturer's own, and that restriction has a consequence worth understanding before you enquire: the market version, the language set on the artwork and the date format are properties of the goods rather than variables we can adjust to suit a destination. Where the available pack will not satisfy your market, the honest answer is that this allocation is not for you.

Ask for the things that have to exist on paper. A registered company identity and VAT number you can verify in a national register. The market version and label language of the specific allocation on offer. Batch codes and best-before dates in writing before payment rather than after it. A coherent account of where inside the EU the goods were bought. A seller comfortable giving all of that verbally and none of it in a document has already answered the question. Our own position is set out under authenticity and compliance.

No — and we decline to be described as one in a buyer's tender paperwork either. We are an independent trader in genuine brand-owner stock: no appointment, no exclusivity, no licence and no partnership with any manufacturer. The brand names used here belong to their owners and appear descriptively, to say what is in the box. That is a matter of law rather than of modesty.

Most are. A minority are not — a water bottled elsewhere, a spice or a dried ingredient grown outside Europe, imported into the single market and shipped onward from it by us. The offer identifies which is which, because preferential origin follows the place of manufacture rather than the nationality of the brand on the pack, and that distinction decides whether a EUR.1 is available to your border at all.

Because any figure printed here would be describing an order nobody placed. A wholesale offer is not a single number; it is the product of what is allocated in the week you ask, the format, whether you are buying cases or a full load, the Incoterm, the duty and excise treatment at your border, and whether this is one shipment or a programme. Every offer is written against a requirement you have already stated, which is what makes the figure one we can stand behind.

Current allocation on the lines you named. Format and pack size, because freight is bought by weight and by cube rather than by case. Order structure, from a mixed pallet up to a full container. The Incoterm, which decides how much of the journey sits on our side of the invoice. The destination's duty, excise and labelling treatment. And whether we are pricing a single shipment or a repeating one. Buyers routinely save more by reconsidering the third and fourth of those than by arguing about the first.

On listed brands, a written quotation within one business day. Enquiries involving a line we do not currently list, an unusual document requirement or a destination with its own registration regime take longer — and we will tell you that rather than let a thread go quiet.

Against a pro-forma invoice, which is the controlling document from that point on. It states the goods and variants, the quantities, the pallet build, the batch and best-before dating, the Incoterm with its named place, the documents that will travel and the scope of delivery. Nothing material is agreed outside it, and a purchase order that contradicts it does not change it. Settlement is by bank transfer, and anything else is negotiated individually and recorded on the pro-forma itself before allocation is held. The commercial framework behind that sits on the Incoterms and payment terms page.

Worldwide, on every continent, which is why there is no country list on this site: a list gets read as a boundary, and geography is almost never the real constraint. What decides whether a destination works is whether its import regime can be satisfied from the stock available — labelling, registration, certification and origin evidence. Name the market and you will get an answer in those terms rather than a yes or a no.

It depends on how much of the journey you already control. EXW Madrid suits a buyer running its own European consolidation with a forwarder in place. FOB puts export formalities and the haul to the quay on us, and the ocean contract on you. CFR and CIF fold the sea leg — and with CIF the marine cover — into one figure, though risk still passes at the port of loading, which is exactly what that insurance is for. DAP delivers to an address you name, with import duty and taxes still yours as importer of record. DDP is not part of the standard offer.

No. The registered office is a company address, not a warehouse, and no goods are handed over there. EXW here means our own premises rather than a port. Collections are booked in advance with the logistics desk, which issues the loading address and a collection reference with the booking; a driver arriving without that reference cannot be loaded, so pass it to your haulier as soon as you have it.

The sailing chooses; we book accordingly. Both gateways sit inside a day's road haul of Madrid, Valencia at roughly 355 km and Barcelona at roughly 620 km, which is the practical advantage of loading inland: the gateway is chosen inside your quotation rather than inherited from wherever the seller happens to sit. Algeciras is there when a carrier's routing puts your destination on a service calling at a transhipment hub, and Coslada gives a rail option. Where you nominate your own European forwarder, we deliver into whichever terminal it names. The comparison of the two Mediterranean gateways sets out the trade-offs.

Nobody who ships regularly should publish that as a range. Transit belongs to the service you are booked on rather than to the seller: the string, the number of transhipments, the carrier's schedule, the season and the speed of your own clearing agent all decide it. The desk quotes the sailing and the carrier's stated transit for your actual booking, then tells you when the box is collected and when it is loaded. How a load is built, sealed and routed walks through the sequence.

At minimum the commercial invoice, a case-level packing list, the export declaration and the transport document appropriate to the mode — bill of lading, sea waybill or CMR. Origin evidence travels alongside: a Certificate of Origin, or a EUR.1 movement certificate where the goods qualify and the destination's agreement provides for that instrument. The packing list is written out line by line because that is what a clearance agent reads and what your own goods-in team counts against.

Only where two things are true at once: the destination holds a preferential agreement with the EU that provides for the certificate, and the goods on your invoice actually qualify on origin. Where no such agreement exists — the Gulf states and Nigeria are the standing examples — a Certificate of Origin travels instead, often certified by a chamber of commerce and sometimes legalised, and it reduces nobody's duty. A supplier offering a EUR.1 for any destination on request is telling you something about how carefully it reads agreements.

We can tell you precisely what is on the pack; we cannot alter it, because the goods stay in the producer's sealed packaging. In practice that means the market version and the language set are confirmed in writing before you commit, so your compliance team assesses the artwork that will actually arrive against the rule that actually applies, rather than against an assumption. Where a market permits translated stickering, the sticker normally forms part of the label the authority assesses — so it belongs in the plan at enquiry stage, not in the importer's warehouse afterwards.

Where a manufacturer issues certification at product level it travels with the goods, and the desk establishes what exists for a line before you are asked to commit to it. We do not promise a certificate a producer does not provide, and we do not issue decorative documents. Pre-shipment conformity assessment, third-party inspection and consular or chamber legalisation all have to be arranged before the goods move, and several of them cannot be issued retrospectively — which is why they belong in your first message rather than in the week of loading.

Trade buyers only: importers and regional distributors, retail, convenience and discount groups, wholesalers and cash-and-carry operators, pharmacy and parapharmacy chains on the skincare ranges, and export houses buying for onward markets. Not consumers, and nothing below case level. Registering a trade account asks what you do with the goods as well as where they are going, and it happens before the first quotation rather than after it.

Five things, and with all five in hand an offer normally comes back inside a business day: the lines with variants and pack formats; the quantity you buy in, stated as cases, pallets or containers; the destination port or delivery address; the Incoterm you trade on; and whatever your own market imposes on labelling, registration or certification. If the term is still open, say so — the desk will price two and let you compare the landed positions, which is where most of the money in a first order actually is.

It depends on the line and on what is allocated, so it is settled line by line at the desk instead of by blanket policy. Where samples are impractical the alternative is usually sufficient: the exact pack, the market version, the artwork language and the batch coding confirmed in writing before payment, which covers most of what a sample would have proved to you.

Ask anyway. The grid on the catalogue index reflects what is held and moving rather than the boundary of what can be sourced, and enquiries for unlisted lines are welcome. What comes back will be specific — either the basis on which the line can be found, or a straight no — rather than an open-ended promise to look into it.