Bounty — Wholesale Supply

Ask us for a price on Bounty in February for a European delivery and again in July for a Gulf or West African discharge, and the two answers will not look alike. That is not opportunism. Chocolate is a temperature-sensitive cargo, and the cost of getting it to the far end in saleable condition depends on the month it sails, the route it takes and the equipment it sails in. Iguazu Trading exports the bar from Madrid as genuine EU-produced stock in the manufacturer's own sealed packaging, worldwide, within our confectionery range for export. This page explains how the seasonal side of the quote is built, because it is the part buyers most often budget wrongly.

Why the month is part of the specification

A chocolate countline leaving Madrid in the northern winter for a temperate market is an ordinary ambient shipment in a standard dry box. The same product, on the same lane, in high summer, has to cross a Spanish inland leg in the heat, sit in a coastal terminal, occupy a container that gains heat in the stack, and then wait at destination for clearance in a yard with no shade. The product has not changed. The exposure has.

So we ask for the discharge port and the intended sailing month at enquiry stage, and we quote against those rather than against a standing rate for the year. Buyers who plan a confectionery programme around a single annual price tend to be pleasantly surprised twice and unpleasantly surprised once, which is a poor way to run a category. It is more useful to know in advance which of your shipments are the expensive ones and to place them accordingly.

Ambient box or temperature-controlled unit

There are two ways to move chocolate and the decision is made per shipment, not per customer.

A standard dry container is the right answer for most sailings: cooler months, shorter legs, temperate destinations, and routes where the box does not sit. It is cheaper, simpler and entirely appropriate. A temperature-controlled unit is the right answer when the route crosses a hot corridor at the wrong time of year, when the destination has a slow clearance reputation, or when the consignee is a modern-trade customer whose receiving standard leaves no room for cosmetic damage.

The honest framing is that the controlled unit costs more freight and buys you a lower probability of a rejected delivery, and the arithmetic tips when the value of what is at risk exceeds the difference. On a hot corridor in the wrong month, with a retail customer who can reject on appearance, the controlled unit is usually the cheaper of the two once the rejection is priced. We will tell you which side of that line we think your shipment falls, and we will quote both if you would rather decide yourself. Set points and equipment type are agreed on the booking and written into the pro-forma, not assumed.

The coconut centre is a slightly different problem

Most heat guidance for countlines is about the chocolate softening and the bar losing its shape. On this line the more relevant question is the relationship between a moist filling and its coating over a long, warm transit, which tends to show up as dulling or surface bloom rather than as deformation. Bloom is a cosmetic and textural change rather than a safety one, but it is a rejection risk at retail because it looks like age, and appearance is what a shopper judges a countline on.

What follows from that is not exotic. It means stow position and standing time matter as much as sea days, that a container waiting three days on a quay in a hot month is doing more damage than the voyage before it, and that humidity along the route is worth mentioning to us rather than leaving out because it seems like a detail.

Variants and formats

The milk and dark versions behave as two commercial lines rather than as two facings of one product. Milk is the broader-appeal version and the safer opening weighting in most markets. Dark draws an older and more deliberate buyer and in several markets is the version customers mean when they name the brand. There is no universal split, and any supplier quoting you one has not looked at your market; the workable method is to open with a weighting you can defend, read one full replenishment cycle, then rebalance on the second order.

Across both, we handle singles, twin bars, multipack and sharing formats and minis for mixed and seasonal displays, subject to allocation. Which formats are open, the case configuration, the pallet build and the pallet positions per 20ft or 40ft are confirmed in writing on the pro-forma against the stock actually offered. We do not publish those figures, because they move with format and production run. Since confectionery is light for the space it fills, most bar-led containers leave payload unused, which is why buyers routinely combine categories on one booking rather than shipping air above the cartons.

If a delivery arrives in poor condition

Heat damage is assessable if it is recorded properly and almost impossible to resolve if it is not. Photograph the load inside the container before it is stripped, note the seal number against the transport document, and identify damage by pallet position rather than reporting a total, because a claim tied to positions can be traced back to a stow and a leg while a claim expressed as a percentage cannot. Keep the outer cases and keep a sample.

What we will and will not accept is written down rather than negotiated after the event, and the returns and claims policy states the evidence required and the window it must be raised in. Read it before a first summer sailing rather than during one. How the routing, transit and delivery stages fit together is set out under shipping and delivery.

Terms, ports and documents

Loading is from our Madrid warehouse, inland: Valencia around 355 km and Barcelona around 620 km, each roughly a day's road haul, with Algeciras for transhipment and Coslada for rail. We trade EXW Madrid, meaning our premises rather than a port, plus FOB, CFR, CIF and DAP under Incoterms 2020, and DDP is not offered as standard. Shipments carry a commercial invoice, packing list, export declaration and transport document, a Certificate of Origin, and a EUR.1 movement certificate where a preferential agreement between the EU and your destination applies. Stock is EU-produced, supplied in the manufacturer's own sealed packaging and never re-boxed or relabelled. We are an independent distributor with no appointment from any brand owner, and we supply trade buyers only.