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Real values, named methods
Every specification line on this site carries an actual number and the test standard that produces it — ASTM D5, EN 1427, IS 1206 and the rest. A property without a method is not a specification.
Bitumen Asphaltive is an export supply desk for bitumen and related petroleum products.
The work is matching a buyer's technical requirement to available supply, fixing the specification and commercial terms in writing, and getting the cargo and its document set to the destination in a condition that satisfies both the project engineer and the buyer's bank.
It is worth setting out exactly what is being claimed here, because the rest of this page is written against it. This desk responds to export enquiries for bitumen and related petroleum products, it works in the Middle East trade, and it communicates on WhatsApp. That is the entire claim. Nothing on this site asserts a size, a history, ownership of production or storage, a tonnage moved, a client list or a standing in the market. Where you find a number anywhere on this site it belongs to a standard, a rule, a piece of arithmetic or a packing convention. None of them belongs to this desk.
Each of those has its own page on this site with the specification table, the test methods behind each line, the handling temperatures and the packing options. That library is the substantive part of what is on offer here, and it is free to use whether or not you ever send an enquiry.
Every enquiry runs through one WhatsApp number, +971 56 144 5733. It carries the whole working conversation, because it keeps grade, quantity, packing, documents and every revision in one scrollable thread that both sides hold a copy of — which matters in a trade where a misunderstanding about net weight or a delivery term is expensive to unpick afterwards. It also carries attachments, so a project specification, a tender document or a draft contract goes down the same thread as the discussion about it rather than into a second record nobody reconciles. Corrections to a page on this site can also be sent to the address published on the technical content disclaimer, which is where the correction procedure is set out.
Two consequences are worth stating plainly. The first is that anything agreed in a message can be read back later by either side, which is a constraint on this desk before it is a convenience to you. The second is that a single published enquiry number is itself a verification anchor. If a message ever reaches you claiming that this desk's contact details or banking details have changed, the number on this page is the one to call, and no change of bank details announced by message or by email should ever be acted on, here or anywhere else. That rule runs in both directions and it is set out pattern by pattern on the avoiding fraud page.
These are the rules the content is written to, and they are the same rules applied to an actual transaction.
Every specification line on this site carries an actual number and the test standard that produces it — ASTM D5, EN 1427, IS 1206 and the rest. A property without a method is not a specification.
Published ranges are described as typical export values, never as a guarantee. The binding specification is the sales contract, evidenced by the batch Certificate of Analysis.
Where a value could not be substantiated, the row was left out rather than filled in. Several pages say plainly that a commercial band has no governing standard behind it.
Grade equivalence tables are for sourcing. Substituting one grade for another is the specifying engineer's decision, in writing, before shipment.
Independent sampling at load port with sealed retained samples settles a quality question in a way that no supplier's own laboratory report can.
Standards get revised. If you find a value on this site that conflicts with a current standard, say so and it will be corrected.
Each page shows the month it was last checked against its sources, and the date moves only when the check was actually made. A page with no date cannot tell you which edition it describes.
Not one figure per tonne appears anywhere on this site. Bitumen tracks crude and freight, packing changes the container count, and a published number is stale on the day it is written.
A page describes an edition of a standard. The edition your contract or your road authority names decides the limit, which is frequently not the newest one published.
More than 140 pages here carry specification values, test methods, handling temperatures or commercial rules. This is the set of rules they are written to, because a reader who knows how a number reached a page knows how far it can be pushed.
Three kinds of source sit behind the content, and they are not equal.
Losing the distinction between the first source and the third is what causes commercial damage, which is why it is marked on the page rather than left to the reader to infer.
Every specification line on this site carries the test method that produces it, and that is not a formatting habit. "Penetration 60–70" is not a requirement until it reads penetration at 25 °C, 100 g, 5 s, by ASTM D5 or EN 1426 or IS 1203, because the conditioning is the measurement. The same applies down the sheet: softening point by the ring and ball method under ASTM D36 or EN 1427; flash point by Cleveland open cup under ASTM D92, which is the wrong apparatus for a cutback and is therefore a finding if you see it reported against one; solubility in trichloroethylene by ASTM D2042; ductility by ASTM D113.
Viscosity is the sharpest case. Absolute viscosity at 60 °C by IS 1206 (Part 2), kinematic viscosity at 135 °C, and rotational viscosity at 135 °C by ASTM D4402 are three different quantities reported in three different units, and poise, centistokes and pascal seconds are not interchangeable by inspection. A page that gives a viscosity without saying which one it is has not said anything, and a certificate that does the same cannot be compared with any specification limit.
Take the most widely traded grade as the worked example. For 60/70 penetration grade under ASTM D946, the standard itself requires a flash point of at least 232 °C by ASTM D92, solubility of at least 99.0 wt % by ASTM D2042, ductility of at least 100 cm by ASTM D113, and retained penetration of at least 52 % after the thin film oven test under ASTM D1754. Those are requirements. They can be written into a contract as acceptance criteria and, if they are disputed, there is a document to open.
The softening point band of 49–56 °C, the flash point minimum of 250 °C, the specific gravity band of 1.01–1.06 and the water content cap of 0.2 vol % that appear on most export data sheets for the same grade are not requirements of ASTM D946. They are commercial practice. They remain useful, because they tell you what the market ships, but they cannot carry the weight of an acceptance criterion. Pages here say which is which every time the question arises.
The most consequential example of the difference is the ageing line. ASTM D946 sets a minimum of 52 % retained penetration for grade 60-70. Most export specifications express the same measurement inverted, as a maximum drop in penetration of 20 %, which is a minimum of 80 % retained. Those two lines look like alternative wordings of one requirement and they are not: one is materially stricter than the other, and a cargo can satisfy the standard while breaching the contract. Establishing which of the two your own contract names takes five minutes and occasionally saves a shipment.
The rule that does the most work is the least visible one. Where a question could not be settled from a primary source, the page declines to answer it rather than filling the gap with something plausible. In practice that means no page here states a transit time as a fact, no page states a duty rate, no page states what any particular refinery produces or what any particular terminal holds, and several pages state plainly that a figure in wide circulation has no governing standard behind it and then leave it there.
A missing row is not an oversight. It is the only honest form of an answer nobody could verify, and it is worth more to you than a guess, because a guess is indistinguishable from a fact until the day it costs money. It also has a cost for this site, which is that a search engine and a hurried reader both reward the page that answers everything. That trade has been made deliberately and in one direction.
Three calculators run on this site — tonnage and volume conversion, drum and container loading, and prime coat quantity — and a fourth tool assembles an enquiry out of what you type, does no arithmetic at all and sends nothing anywhere. Each prints its assumptions beside the answer, because the arithmetic is exact and the assumptions are not.
A conversion between volume and mass rests on a density, and the density of bitumen falls as temperature rises: a tonne occupies roughly 0.971 m³ at 15 °C and roughly 1.051 m³ at a 150 °C loading temperature, which is the origin of a large share of the quantity disputes in this trade. For custody transfer the measurement your contract specifies governs, and the published route is gauging under API MPMS Chapter 3, temperature under Chapter 7, calculation under Chapter 12, with volume corrected to a base temperature under ASTM D4311 using a density measured to ASTM D70. Loading figures are stated site-wide on one convention — 80 steel drums in a 20 ft container, giving 12 MT at 150 kg net, 14.4 MT at 180 kg and 14.8 MT at 185 kg, or 20 jumbo bags of one tonne for 20 MT — and they move with drum dimensions and with the road weight limit at destination, which is frequently the binding constraint rather than the volume of the box.
Every page carries the month it was last reviewed, and that date moves only when the content has actually been checked against its sources. This matters more than it looks, because standards are revised and a page with no date cannot tell you whether it describes the edition your project is built to. IS 73 replaced penetration grading with viscosity grading in its 2013 edition. AASHTO M332 now sits alongside M320, grading the same binders by multiple stress creep recovery. GOST 33133 exists beside GOST 22245 and both are still named in contracts. A page describes an edition; the edition named in your contract governs.
Reviews run on a rolling basis and happen immediately when a reader reports a revision that has been missed. A correction is easiest to act on when it carries three things: the page address, the exact wording or table cell in question, and the standard designation with its edition year and the clause or table number. That turns a disagreement into a correction in minutes rather than an exchange of opinions. The full statement of how this material should be used, category by category, is on the technical content disclaimer.
Not everything on this site is the same kind of statement. A limit from a published standard, a band copied off a producer data sheet, a rule of thumb and a sentence about this desk are four different things wearing the same typeface. This table sorts them by what they rest on, how you can check them without asking anyone here, and how far each can be pushed in a contract or a dispute.
| What this site publishes | What it rests on | How you can verify it yourself | How far it can be pushed |
|---|---|---|---|
| A standard limit for a named grade | The text of a published standard — ASTM D946, EN 12591, IS 73:2013, AASHTO M320, ASTM D312 and the rest | Open the edition your contract or road authority names and read the clause. The designation and, where useful, the clause are given so you can find it | Usable as a contract acceptance criterion, once you have confirmed it against the edition that governs your project |
| A test method designation | The method text itself, which carries the apparatus, the conditioning and the precision statement | The standard. Precision statements are what tell you how much scatter is normal between two laboratories | Reliable. Name the method beside every property in the contract; a limit without a method cannot be enforced |
| A typical export specification band | Producer and refinery technical data sheets that circulate in the trade, labelled as practice wherever they appear | Compare against the data sheets you are sent. No standards body publishes these bands, which is exactly the point | Orientation only. Never an acceptance criterion, because in a dispute there is no document to open |
| A practice figure — handling temperature, application rate, dosage | Common practice and experience, with no issuing body behind it | Your own method statement, mix design and trial section | A starting point for a trial. Written into a contract as a requirement it creates an obligation with nothing standing behind it |
| Packing and loading arithmetic | One convention used site-wide: 80 steel drums per 20 ft container — 12 MT at 150 kg net, 14.4 MT at 180 kg, 14.8 MT at 185 kg — and 20 jumbo bags of 1 MT for 20 MT | Multiply it out, then confirm with your forwarder and against the road weight limit at destination | Good enough to size an enquiry and to check a supplier's container count. Not a stow plan, and not a substitute for the carrier's payload cap on the lane |
| Calculator output | Arithmetic on the assumptions printed beside it, such as a tonne of bitumen occupying about 0.971 m³ at 15 °C and about 1.051 m³ at 150 °C | Reproduce it in a spreadsheet in two minutes | As good as the density and temperature you fed it. Custody transfer follows the measurement your contract specifies, under API MPMS and ASTM D4311 |
| A commercial or banking rule | Published texts: UCP 600, URC 522, URDG 758, ISP98 and Incoterms 2020 from the ICC; SOLAS; ISO 6346 and ISO 668; the UN Model Regulations | Article numbers are cited so that you can look up the provision in the publication itself | Reliable as a citation and useful in drafting. It is not legal or banking advice, and the wording you sign governs the outcome |
| Grade and climate guidance | General reasoning about climate, traffic, application and mix | Your measured pavement temperatures and the code your road authority has adopted, in the edition in force | Directional. The grade decision belongs to the engineer who has seen the mix design and signs for the pavement |
| A statement about this desk | This page, and nothing else | Nothing on the internet can verify it. It can only be tested against how one specific enquiry is actually handled | The lowest-weight category on the site, and it is meant to be. Build nothing on it that a contract should carry |
| A Certificate of Analysis issued against a cargo | A laboratory measurement of one sampled batch, on one date, by the methods named on the document | Sealed retained samples drawn under ASTM D140, AASHTO T 40 or EN 58 and retested by a laboratory you chose | Evidence for that batch, that date and that method. It says nothing about the next batch and nothing about the material after it left |
Most bitumen supplier websites carry a set of claims that this one does not. That is a decision, not an oversight.
You will not find a founding year, a tonnage figure, a client count, a certification badge or a phrase like leading supplier anywhere on this site. The reason is straightforward: none of those things is verifiable by you from a web page, and in a trade with a real fraud problem, an unverifiable claim is worth less than nothing. A buyer who checks one claim and finds it hollow will discount everything else on the site, correctly.
What is offered instead is the part that can be checked. The specification tables can be checked against the published standards. The test method citations can be checked against ASTM, CEN and BIS. The arithmetic in the calculators can be checked with a spreadsheet. The logic of the buyer guidance can be checked against your own experience of the trade. If those hold up, they tell you something real about how the desk works. If any of them does not hold up, that tells you something too.
It means this site cannot be used as evidence of capacity, history or standing, and it does not ask to be. Those things are established the way they are always established in commodity trade — through the contract, the payment instrument, the inspection arrangement and the documents. That is where a buyer's protection actually lives, and it is where the attention belongs.
There is no price on any page of this site, and there will not be one. Bitumen is priced off crude and refinery economics, and the number that lands at your gate is then moved by packing, container count, freight on the specific lane, origin and destination terminal handling, insurance cover and the payment structure. A per-tonne figure published on a web page is missing every one of those inputs and is stale on the day it is written.
A price you can rely on has to name a grade and its governing standard, a tonnage, a packing with the net weight per unit, a discharge port written out in full, an Incoterms 2020 rule with the named place, a validity date and a payment instrument — at which point it is an offer capable of acceptance, not a web page. The components that actually move the number are set out on what drives the price, and the sixteen lines a complete offer states are on the quotation page. If you want a budget figure, ask for one and it will be described as an indication, which is what it is: useful for planning, useless in a tender.
"Ready stock" is the most common unverifiable sentence in this trade, and it is the one that carries the most weight with a buyer under schedule pressure, which is precisely why it is used. This site makes no stock claim, because a stock claim on a web page is an adjective rather than a fact.
What makes availability real is evidence, and the evidence has a shape: a batch number, a storage location an inspector you appointed can attend, a Certificate of Analysis for that batch with sampling and test dates on it, and a willingness to have the packing condition and marking inspected before the container is sealed. Availability against a specific requirement is confirmed at the time you ask, in writing, and if it cannot be confirmed that is what will be said. Ask for the evidence rather than the assurance — here and with every other supplier — because the assurance costs nothing to give and the evidence costs something to produce, which is the entire difference between them.
A sailing schedule belongs to a carrier, not to a supplier. Port congestion, blank sailings, transhipment, equipment availability and customs at both ends all move it, and free time at destination is set by the carrier's tariff rather than by anything written in a sales contract. Any delivery date promised in a web page, or in a first message before a booking exists, is a number somebody has invented.
What can properly be committed to is a shipment window tied to a trigger event — so many days from receipt of a workable documentary credit, or from receipt of the advance — together with whether partial shipment and transhipment are allowed. Both of those defaults are worth knowing, because they apply whether or not anyone discussed them: UCP 600 Article 31(a) permits partial shipments unless the credit prohibits them, and Article 20(c) permits a bill of lading to indicate transhipment in defined circumstances even where the credit prohibits it. If either matters to your schedule, it belongs in the contract as well as in the credit.
Certificates are used decoratively in this trade more often than they are used as evidence, and the three that appear most often on supplier sites mean three different things, none of which is a promise about a cargo that has not yet been produced.
Where a certificate matters to you, verify it with the body that issued it, using contact details you looked up yourself rather than the ones printed on the document. Accredited management system certificates can be checked in the International Accreditation Forum's CertSearch database; a laboratory accreditation is checked in the register of the accreditation body that granted it, which should be a signatory to the ILAC mutual recognition arrangement. A certificate that cannot be verified with its issuer is a picture of a certificate.
Clear boundaries save both sides time, and they are easier to check than a mission statement.
| Will | Will not |
|---|---|
| Name the grade and the governing standard in every offer | Offer a grade as 'or equivalent' and leave the acceptance criteria undefined |
| State plainly when a requirement cannot be met on the route or timeline requested | Accept an enquiry and let the Certificate of Analysis reveal the gap later |
| Support third-party inspection at load port and treat its certificate as governing | Present an in-house test report as a substitute for independent inspection |
| Quote packing as new steel drums where new drums are specified | Substitute reconditioned drums against an order that specifies new |
| Fix the quantity basis — weight, and the point of determination — in the contract | Leave quantity to be argued from volume readings at two different temperatures |
| Say when something is a typical commercial convention with no standard behind it | Present a commercial data-sheet band as if it were a specification requirement |
| Answer a technical question directly, including when the answer is 'that needs a test' | Answer a technical question with a brochure |
| Keep one published enquiry number and expect to be called on it | Announce a change of contact or banking details by message and expect it to be acted on |
| Show the loading arithmetic behind a container count and the packing it assumes | State a tonnage per container without saying what net weight per unit produced it |
| Say when a question is outside what this desk can answer, and where the answer actually lives | Answer a legal, banking, customs or tax question as though it were settled |
| Give a budget number when asked, and label it an indication | Present an indication as a firm offer, or leave a validity date off a price |
The sequence is deliberately front-loaded: the questions that decide whether a deal works are asked before pricing, not after.
Grade, governing standard, quantity, packing, destination and delivery term. Where a project specification exists it is read against what can actually be supplied on that route. Nine lines make an enquiry answerable and the first four are enough to begin, and they are set out in the table below; anything you cannot answer yet is better sent as a stated unknown than as a guess, because a guess propagates silently into a price.
Specification, packing with net weight, price basis and Incoterm, validity, documentation and payment structure. Anything that cannot be met is stated rather than omitted. Where the price is CFR, CIF, CPT or CIP, note that the freight behind it carries its own and usually shorter validity than the product price, so a landed number can expire in two parts on two different days.
Grade and standard, quantity basis and point of determination, inspection arrangement and payment instrument go into the contract. This is the stage that decides how any later dispute resolves. Quantity tolerance belongs here too: where payment is by documentary credit and the quantity is not expressed in packing units or individual items, UCP 600 Article 30(b) supplies a tolerance of 5 % more or less whether or not either party asked for one.
Production and packing, inspection where agreed with sealed retained samples, loading, and the document set assembled to match the contract and the letter of credit exactly. The presentation dates are not negotiable after the fact: UCP 600 Article 14(c) requires a presentation containing an original transport document within 21 calendar days of shipment and in any event by expiry, and Article 14(b) allows each bank five banking days to examine, so the shipment window and the credit expiry have to be workable before anyone ships against them.
Retained samples stay sealed with both parties for the agreed period, which is what keeps a later quality question answerable at all. Test on arrival rather than when a problem appears in the pavement: where the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods governs, Article 38 requires examination within as short a period as is practicable in the circumstances and Article 39(1) requires notice specifying the nature of any lack of conformity within a reasonable time, subject to a long-stop of two years from the date the goods were actually handed over under Article 39(2) unless a contractual guarantee period says otherwise.
Most enquiries that receive a thin answer were not ignored; they were unanswerable, because pricing them would have required inventing four or five assumptions that will later turn out to be wrong at exactly the moment you have committed to them. Nine lines make an enquiry workable, and the first four are enough to begin. What happens after the message is straightforward: it is read against what can be supplied on that route, anything that cannot be met is raised before a price is discussed rather than after, and where a requirement is outside what this desk can serve that is said in the first reply. Nothing is submitted to this website and an enquiry carries no obligation on either side — the enquiry builder on the quotation page assembles the text in your own browser and only sends it when you press the button yourself. What you then send becomes an ordinary message thread, held on this side until you ask for it to be deleted, and the privacy policy says so in those words rather than claiming a retention period nobody enforces.
| What to send | A usable version of the line | What it settles | What its absence costs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grade and governing standard | Bitumen 60/70 to ASTM D946, or VG-30 to IS 73:2013, or PG 64-22 to AASHTO M320, or oxidized 85/25 to ASTM D312 | Which limit table and which test methods the entire discussion runs on, and therefore what the Certificate of Analysis will have to show | The word "equivalent" enters the conversation with nobody having defined it. A cargo can sit inside 60–70 dmm by ASTM D5 and still fail solubility by ASTM D2042 or retained penetration after the thin film oven test |
| Tonnage per shipment, and the total over what period | 300 MT this shipment, around 1,200 MT over four months | Whether this is a container lot, a vessel parcel or a call-off programme — the single largest influence on how a requirement can be served | Everything is treated as a one-off at the smallest workable lot, and a call-off arrangement that might have suited you is never discussed |
| Packing, with net weight per unit | New, unused and non-reconditioned steel drums, 180 kg net, marked with grade, batch number, net and tare weight | The container count and therefore the freight, terminal handling and documentation, which are charged per container and not per tonne. On the site convention: 80 drums per 20 ft container gives 12 MT at 150 kg, 14.4 MT at 180 kg, 14.8 MT at 185 kg; 20 jumbo bags of 1 MT gives 20 MT | Reconditioned drums are not excluded, because an order that does not say new, unused and non-reconditioned has not excluded them — and they are a legitimate product at a legitimately lower price |
| Discharge port written out in full, plus any inland delivery point | CIP Mundra, Incoterms 2020, with onward delivery to the plant arranged by us | Which lane, which freight, which import documentation regime and which safety data sheet language applies | Only an origin-side number is possible, and the document list cannot be matched to your customs regime |
| Incoterms 2020 rule with the named place | FCA followed by the full name and address of the container terminal, Incoterms 2020 | Where cost and risk change hands, and which legs each side arranges. FOB, CFR and CIF are drafted for bulk sea shipment; for containerised cargo the corresponding rules are FCA, CPT and CIP | Two prices that cannot be compared, because a rule without a named place has not fixed the delivery point and a rule without an edition has not fixed which text applies |
| The payment structure you can actually operate | Irrevocable documentary credit at sight under UCP 600, issued by our bank, requiring an inspection certificate from an inspector we appoint | The commercial frame of the whole transaction, and it is worth more than the last few dollars per tonne | The structure gets discussed after the price is agreed, which is the worst possible order, because by then it looks like a renegotiation rather than a term |
| Your inspection intention | We will appoint an inspector at load port; scope to cover quality, quantity, packing condition and marking, container sealing, and sealed retained samples drawn under ASTM D140 | Whether the inspection fee sits inside or outside the price, and whose certificate governs | An inspection scope that covers quality and quantity but is silent on packing — which is the scope under which packing substitution passes unnoticed |
| The documents your side needs | Batch Certificate of Analysis with the method beside every value, certificate of origin, safety data sheet in the 16-section GHS format in the destination's official language | What has to be produced and by whom, which is what a bank pays against and what customs clears against | A document described loosely becomes a discrepancy under a credit and a delay at the port. A safety data sheet in the wrong format or language is refused regardless of what is in the container |
| Your timing, and what triggers it | Required on site in week 12; we can open the credit within 10 days of a signed contract | Whether the requirement is achievable at all, and what the shipment window should be measured from | A calendar date agreed before a credit exists, which becomes unachievable the moment a bank is slow, after which somebody needs an amendment and somebody pays for it |
Use the same checklist you would use on any supplier. It is published on this site precisely so that it can be turned back on the desk that published it.
A supplier who objects to that checklist has told you what you needed to know. A supplier who published it has at least made the standard explicit.
The fastest filter available in this trade costs one message, and it works because these questions have single correct answers. They are printed here with the answers so that you can mark the reply yourself, on this desk or on any other.
What you are testing is not whether the answer is memorised. It is whether the person replying distinguishes a standard requirement from a data sheet convention, because that distinction is the difference between someone who has read the specification and someone who has been forwarded it.
The fraud prevention page on this site sets out the patterns that occur in commodity trade and the control that defeats each one. Nothing about that page exempts the desk that published it, and this table says specifically how each control is run here. The third column describes what a satisfactory response looks like so that you can recognise an unsatisfactory one; it is not a promise about how any transaction will go, and it should not be read as one. The fourth column is the more useful of the two.
| Control | How to run it here | What a satisfactory response looks like | What should stop you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Contact verification | The WhatsApp number on this page is the only enquiry channel published. Use it rather than any detail that arrived inside a message, and keep it in your own supplier record | The same number carries the thread you have been in and the person picks it up where it was left | A different number or address offered inside a message, or a request to move the conversation to a channel you were not given on this site |
| Technical competence | Ask the questions in the section above, which have single right answers, and ask them before price | Direct answers in the responder's own words with the standard named, including "that needs a test" where that is the honest answer | A data sheet attached instead of a reply, or a technical question redirected into a question about tonnage and price |
| Documentation basis, in writing, before commitment | Ask which certificate will be issued, covering which properties, by which methods, tested by whom and on what date relative to loading | A written list naming the batch Certificate of Analysis, its properties and methods, and whether third-party inspection sits inside or outside the price | "All export documents will be provided", which names nothing and commits to nothing |
| Independent inspection | Nominate the inspection company yourself, pay it directly so its duty runs to you, write the scope, and make its certificate a condition of payment | Agreement, and then a discussion about scope and timing rather than about whether | Resistance to an inspector you appointed, or an offer to arrange one for you at your cost with the report addressed to the seller |
| Payment structure | Propose a structure that follows performance: a documentary credit at sight under UCP 600 requiring an inspection certificate from a company you named, a documentary collection on documents against payment under URC 522, or a modest advance with the balance against documents | The structure is quoted as asked, with its cost visible as a line rather than folded in silently | A requirement for full advance payment on a first transaction, or a structure that cannot be quoted at all |
| Banking details | They belong in the signed contract once, as a contract term, and are never changed by message. Tell this desk the same rule applies to you | The same rule stated back in writing, in both directions, and a willingness to be called on the published number to confirm | Any message proposing a change of account. Verify by voice on the number on this page before anything moves, and send a test transfer before a balance |
| Entity and name matching | Settle the contracting details before signature, then match that name across the contract, the invoice and the account holder on the payment instruction | The same name in all three places, and a written explanation on record wherever any of them differs | An account in an unrelated name, a personal account, or an account in a country with no connection to the transaction and no explanation offered |
| Price sanity | Compare the offer against the market and against the visible cost structure of crude, processing, packing and freight | A difference that can be explained in one sentence as a fact about the material, the packing or the route | A price materially below the market explained by a story about the seller rather than a fact about the cargo |
| The claims on this site | Check the technical pages against the standards they cite, and check the calculator arithmetic in a spreadsheet | Values that hold up against the edition you hold, and pages that say plainly where a figure is practice rather than a requirement | A value you can show conflicts with the current edition of a standard. Report it and watch whether it is corrected and the review date moved |
| References | Ask, and reach any reference through details you find yourself rather than details you were given | A straight answer about what can and cannot be offered, without an invented list | A reference you can only reach on a number the supplier provided. That is not a reference, it is a phone number |
The technical library on this site was written to be useful independently of any transaction.
A full specification library covering every product family, a complete cross-reference of bitumen test methods across the ASTM, EN and IS systems, a grade equivalence chart that maps ASTM, EN, Indian, Chinese and Russian grade names onto one another, and practical guides to reading a Certificate of Analysis and a Technical Data Sheet critically.
A tonnage and volume converter that applies the temperature correction bitumen actually needs — a tonne occupies about 0.971 m³ at 15 °C and about 1.051 m³ at a 150 °C loading temperature, and that difference is the origin of most quantity disputes in the trade. Alongside it, container and drum loading calculators, packing comparisons and a full Incoterms 2020 guide written for bitumen rather than for general cargo.
Pages on road construction, asphalt plant operation, roofing, waterproofing and industrial applications, each covering which grade family suits the job, the properties that govern performance and the handling temperatures involved.
A set of destination pages covering the documentation, standards and import requirements that differ by market rather than by product — which national standard is written into tenders, which grade designations are in local use, what the safety data sheet has to look like and in which language, and how cargo typically moves on that route. The markets served page is the index to them, and the export process walks the whole sequence from enquiry to discharge in one place.
None of it is gated. No page on this site requires an enquiry, a registration or an email address before it will show you a specification table, a test method or a calculator result.
A statement of method is incomplete without its limits. These are the things this desk is regularly asked for and will not pretend to provide, and in each case the sentence that follows says where the answer actually lives.
No test result originates here. Every value on this site came from a published standard or from a producer's data sheet, and every value on a shipment has to come from a laboratory that ran the method on a sample somebody drew. Where a result matters, the route is a sealed sample drawn under ASTM D140, AASHTO T 40 or EN 58 and tested by a laboratory identified on the report. Where two laboratories disagree, the published route is ASTM D3244, which uses the precision statement of the test method itself to combine both results into a single assigned test value — which is why naming it in the contract turns a stand-off into a calculation.
Grade selection belongs to whoever has the measured pavement temperatures, the traffic loading, the mix design and the code in force, and who signs for the result. Nothing on this site is a pavement design and nothing here should be read as approving a substitution. The grade equivalence tables exist so that you can source against a specification written in another system; they are not authority to ship one grade against a contract that names another. That approval is the specifying engineer's, in writing, before shipment.
UCP 600, URC 522, URDG 758, ISP98, Incoterms 2020, SOLAS, the CISG and the New York Convention are cited on this site with article numbers so that you can look up the provision, and that is the whole of the service being offered. Which of them applies to your transaction, how the wording you sign interacts with the law that governs it, and what remedies are actually available where the assets are, is professional advice and a transaction of consequence deserves it. Duty is a live example of the boundary: it is assessed on the classification declared, and the legal responsibility for an import declaration sits with the declarant, who under FCA, FOB and all four C rules is you.
DDP is the rule buyers ask for most and should ask for least. It requires the seller to act as importer of record in your country, and in many jurisdictions a non-resident entity cannot register for the tax account that role needs, so a DDP price can rest on a customs arrangement nobody can execute — discovered at the port. DAP or DPU with you clearing import is the workable structure. DPU is worth knowing about specifically: it is the only rule in Incoterms 2020 under which the seller unloads at the named place, which is the rule to name if your site cannot discharge a container itself.
If your procurement process requires a supplier questionnaire with certifications, registration numbers, audited accounts and a trading history, this desk will not satisfy it, and that is better said at the beginning of a tender than at the end of one. Nothing of that kind is published here and nothing of that kind will be produced to fill a form, because producing it would mean asserting things this page has just spent several sections explaining are not asserted.
What can be settled in writing is the part that actually governs a shipment: the grade and its standard, the specification schedule with limits and methods, the packing with net weight per unit, the quantity basis and tolerance, the inspection arrangement and its scope, the document list, the payment structure and the resolution route for a disputed test. Those belong in a contract rather than in a profile, and they are where a buyer's protection has always lived.
The last limit is the one this page has been circling from the first paragraph. Nothing written by a supplier about a supplier is evidence, including this. Everything here is either checkable against something outside this site — a standard, a rule, a piece of arithmetic — or it is a description of method that only becomes evidence when you test it on a real requirement. That is the offer: not a reason to trust the desk, but enough material to verify it, and a checklist that was published knowing it would be used here first.
Because neither would be verifiable by you from a web page, and in a trade with a real fraud problem an unverifiable claim is a liability rather than an asset. What is published instead is technical content that can be checked against published standards, and a working method that can be tested by how a specific enquiry is handled. The practical consequence is worth stating in advance: if your procurement process requires a vendor registration pack of certificates, registration numbers and audited history, this desk will not satisfy it, and that is said at the start of a tender rather than at the end. What can be settled in writing is the grade and standard, the specification schedule, the packing and quantity basis, the inspection arrangement, the document list and the payment structure — which is what a contract runs on.
WhatsApp at +971 56 144 5733 is the only enquiry channel published on this site. It carries the discussion because it keeps specification, quantity, packing, documents and revisions in one traceable thread that both sides can scroll back through, and in export trade a single continuous record is genuinely useful when a question about packing or a delivery term comes back three weeks later. It also carries attachments, so a project specification, a draft contract or a document set stays with the conversation about it. A contact detail that reaches you from any other source, claiming to be this desk, is not verified by the message it arrived in.
Two rules cover it, and they are the same two rules you should apply to every supplier. First, the WhatsApp number on this page is the only enquiry channel published; a contact detail that reaches you inside a message is not a verification of itself, so use the published number rather than one you were sent. Second, banking details are set once, in the signed contract, and are never changed by message. If a message ever tells you that this desk's bank account has changed, do not reply to it and do not use any detail in it — call the published number, ask the person to state the details to you rather than confirming details you read out, and send a small test transfer before any balance. The same rule applies in reverse: tell this desk, in writing, that your own details will never change by email either. A rule only one side knows about is not a rule.
The site covers base oil, fuel oil, CST-180, EN590 diesel, LPG, sulfur and urea alongside the bitumen range. Name the product in your enquiry with quantity, destination and delivery term and it will be addressed on the same basis as a bitumen requirement.
State the standard in the enquiry and it will be checked against what can be supplied on that route before pricing. Check first that the standard you name actually contains the grade you are asking for, because the two are frequently mismatched in enquiries: EN 12591 names 20/30, 30/45, 35/50, 40/60, 50/70, 70/100, 100/150, 160/220 and 250/330 and does not name 60/70, 120/150 or 200/300, while ASTM D946 names only 40-50, 60-70, 85-100, 120-150 and 200-300. Name the edition as well, because editions differ in substance rather than only in date — IS 73 replaced penetration grading with viscosity grading in its 2013 edition, and AASHTO M332 now sits alongside M320. Where a requirement cannot be met, that will be said rather than left for the Certificate of Analysis to reveal after loading.
Yes, and it is the recommended arrangement for any first transaction. Appointing an internationally recognised inspection company at load port, with sampling under supervision and sealed retained samples held by both parties, removes most of the quality argument before it can start. Nominate the company yourself, pay it directly so that its duty runs to you, and write the scope to cover packing condition, marking and container sealing as well as quality and quantity — a scope silent on packing is the scope under which packing substitution passes. Inspection bodies work to ISO/IEC 17020 and testing laboratories to ISO/IEC 17025; they are two different accreditations for two different jobs.
Drummed and bagged cargo moves in container loads, so a single 20-foot container is the practical floor — roughly 12 MT as 80 drums of 150 kg, 14.4 MT at 180 kg, or about 20 MT in one-tonne bags. Bulk shipment requires a vessel parcel and starts considerably higher. Send your tonnage and the workable options will be set out.
No price appears anywhere on this site, because a per-tonne figure on a web page is missing packing, container count, freight on your lane, terminal handling and the payment structure, and it is stale on the day it is written. A budget indication can be given on a partial enquiry and it will be labelled an indication, which means useful for planning and not usable in a tender. A number capable of acceptance needs a grade and standard, a tonnage, a packing with net weight per unit, a discharge port in full, an Incoterms 2020 rule with the named place, a validity date and a payment instrument — and at that point it is an offer.
No, and every page says so. They are typical published ranges provided for technical orientation. The binding specification for any shipment is the one written into the sales contract and evidenced by the batch Certificate of Analysis. Note also which figures are which: for 60/70, the flash point minimum of 232 °C, solubility minimum of 99.0 wt % and retained penetration minimum of 52 % are ASTM D946 requirements, while the softening point band of 49–56 °C and the 250 °C flash point minimum on most export data sheets are commercial practice with no standard behind them.
Send it. Standards are revised, and a technical library of this size will contain errors. The most useful report carries three things: the page address, the exact wording or table cell, and the standard designation with its edition year and the clause or table number you are checking against. A correction with a standard reference behind it will be made and the page's review date updated.
Send a grade, quantity, packing, destination port and delivery term. If a project specification exists, send that too and it will be read line by line against what can actually be supplied.