Enquiries are handled on WhatsApp, +971 56 144 5733. That is the only enquiry channel, and this page will not imply otherwise by listing alternatives that do not exist.
A single channel is unusual enough on a trading website that it deserves an explanation rather than a line in a footer. In export trade the practical value of any conversation is whether it can be produced again later — when the cargo is being contracted, when an inspector is being appointed, when a specification line is being argued about, or when someone in your own organisation asks what exactly was agreed. A messaging thread does that well, because it keeps the commercial detail, the technical detail and the attachments in the same place and in the order they happened.
It is not a contract. A conversation can settle the commercial shape of a deal, but the enforceable document is the signed sales contract that fixes grade and governing standard, quantity basis, packing and net weight, inspection arrangement, delivery term and payment structure. Treat everything in the thread as work towards that document, never as a replacement for it. If a point matters enough to argue about later, it belongs in the contract, not only in the chat.
It is not a payment instruction either. Bank details that arrive inside a thread carry no authority of their own; the account that matters is the one written into the signed contract. An instruction that departs from it in any particular — a different beneficiary name, a different branch, a different country of account — is a reason to stop and confirm on a channel you opened yourself, not a reason to move quickly. Messaging accounts can be spoofed, display names can be copied, and a thread that has been read by an outsider can be continued convincingly. Treat that risk as applying to messages that appear to come from this desk exactly as you would to any other counterparty.
Finally, this page makes no promise about how quickly a message is answered. A promise of that kind is worth nothing to you until it has been kept, and there is no way to verify it from a web page before you send anything. What you can control from your side is the quality of the first message — and that has more effect on how fast you get a usable answer than any service commitment printed on a website.
There are two kinds of opening message: one that can be worked on immediately, and one that can only be acknowledged with a question. The difference is about eight lines of detail.
"Please send your best price for bitumen" cannot be answered, and it is worth understanding why rather than treating it as a supplier being difficult. The same tonne of bitumen has a materially different cost depending on whether it goes into new steel drums or a jumbo bag, whether it discharges at one port or another two hundred nautical miles away, whether the price is quoted before or after freight and insurance, and whether third-party inspection and a batch Certificate of Analysis are part of the scope. A price sent without knowing those things is not a favour to the buyer; it is a number that will change, which is worse than no number at all.
A live cargo: "Bitumen 60/70 to ASTM D946. Three × 20 ft FCL in new steel drums, 180 kg net per drum. CFR Mombasa — or CPT Mombasa if you prefer the rule that actually fits containerised cargo. Loading window within six weeks. Batch COA required covering penetration, softening point, flash point and solubility, plus independent inspection at load port. Payment by irrevocable L/C at sight. Please also quote FOB so I can see the freight component separately."
A tender budget: "VG-30 to IS 73:2013, approximately 500 MT in jumbo bags, CIP Chittagong, for a tender closing on 30 September. I need a budget indication with your assumptions listed, not a firm offer — I will come back for a firm offer if we are awarded. Specification page attached."
Neither message is long, and neither reveals anything a buyer needs to protect. What they both do is remove every assumption that would otherwise have to be made on your behalf, which is the only reliable way to get an answer that survives contact with the contract.
Each line below changes the answer you receive. Nothing here is asked for out of curiosity — where an item is missing, an assumption has to be made in its place, and assumptions are what make an offer collapse later.
| What to send | Example of a usable answer | Why it is needed |
|---|---|---|
| Product and grade | Bitumen 60/70 · VG-30 · PG 64-22 · oxidized 90/15 · MC-70 | Identifies the material. Grade families are produced and packed differently and cannot be substituted casually. |
| Governing standard | to ASTM D946 · to IS 73:2013 · to EN 12591 | Tells whether the grade name alone is enough, or whether the offer must be checked line by line against a written specification. |
| Quantity, and whether it repeats | 3 × 20 ft FCL · 500 MT one-off · 200 MT per month | Production planning, packing supply and pricing all behave differently for a single lot and a repeating programme. |
| Packing and net weight | New steel drums, 180 kg net · jumbo bags 1 MT · bitutainer | Sets the container count and the handling equipment you will need at destination. 80 drums of 180 kg is 14.4 MT per 20 ft container. |
| New or reconditioned drums | New steel drums only | Reconditioned drums are cheaper and are a recurring source of contamination disputes and rejected cargo. Write the requirement down rather than assume it. |
| Discharge port, not country | Nhava Sheva · Chittagong · Mombasa · Haiphong | Freight is quoted port to port. Two ports in one country can differ by more than the commercial margin being discussed. |
| Incoterms 2020 rule wanted | FOB · CFR · CIF for bulk; FCA · CPT · CIP for containers | Decides who arranges transport and where risk transfers. A price with no delivery term cannot be compared with any other price. |
| Inland leg, if there is one | Final delivery inland, transiting through a named port | Landlocked or inland destinations change documentation, transit arrangements and the practical choice of packing. |
| Documentation required | Batch COA · certificate of origin · SDS · specific test methods | Documents carry cost and lead time. Naming them at enquiry stage puts them inside the offer rather than into a later argument. |
| Inspection arrangement | Independent inspection at load port, buyer-appointed | Third-party sampling and testing is what converts a quality question from an argument into a document. It has to be priced in, not added on. |
| Payment structure you can execute | Irrevocable L/C at sight · part payment against inspection certificate and B/L | Terms that cannot actually be issued make the rest of the offer academic. Name the instrument you can obtain, not the one that reads strongest. |
| Shipment window | Loading within six weeks · before the end of the quarter | Separates a live requirement from a study, and determines which packing and routing options are genuinely available to you. |
| Stage: budget or live | Budget indication for a tender · firm offer, ready to contract | Decides which kind of number you should receive. Asking for the wrong one costs a full round of correspondence. |
| Project specification, if any | Attached PDF or a clear photograph of the specification page | Removes every remaining assumption about grade, standard, test methods and acceptance limits in one step. |
| Your position in the chain | End user · contractor · trading company · asphalt plant operator | Changes what is useful to send you. A plant operator needs handling temperatures; an intermediary needs a document set their client will accept. |
These are two different things and buyers regularly ask for one while needing the other. An indication is a planning figure with its assumptions on display. A firm offer is a priced commitment for a cargo that has been defined precisely enough to commit to.
| Aspect | Budget indication | Firm offer |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A number for planning, given with the assumptions it rests on stated openly | A priced commitment for a defined cargo, held for a stated period |
| Minimum detail needed from you | Grade, approximate quantity, a packing idea, destination country or port | Grade and governing standard, exact quantity, packing and net weight, named port, Incoterm, shipment window |
| What it is built on | Typical packing, a representative route and current market conditions | The specific packing, route, documentation and payment structure you specified |
| Validity | Normally none — it is a snapshot and should be treated as one | Stated explicitly, because bitumen tracks crude and freight and a price without an expiry is not a price |
| Documentation detail | Described in general terms | Names the COA basis, the inspection arrangement and the full document set |
| Use in a tender or bid | Right for building a cost estimate before you know whether you have the work | What you need before committing a bid price you will not be able to revise |
| How to ask for it | "Budget indication please, with your assumptions listed so I can see what could move it" | "Firm offer please, with validity, packing net weight, Incoterm and documentation basis" |
| Common mistake | Treating an indication as a price you can bid against and being surprised when it moves | Requesting one before the cargo is defined, then rebuilding it three times as the detail arrives |
| What it commits | Nothing on either side; it is information | The seller to the stated terms for the validity period, and you to comparing it honestly against other offers on the same basis |
No timings are promised here, because a timing promise on a web page is unverifiable before you send anything. What can be described honestly is the sequence and what each stage is for.
A requirement is not just a grade and a tonnage. It is a grade, in a packing, on a route, with a document set and a payment structure. The first pass checks whether those five things fit together, because that is where most enquiries fail rather than at the price.
Where an item is absent or ambiguous it has to be resolved first, because a figure resting on an assumed packing or an assumed port is one that will have to be withdrawn later. The checklist above exists so that this stage can usually be skipped: a message that already carries the eight lines rarely needs a second round.
A budget indication with its assumptions visible, or a written offer carrying specification, packing and net weight, price basis and Incoterm, validity, documentation and payment terms. Where part of a requirement cannot be met — a test limit, a packing, a loading window — the offer is the right place for that to surface, while you still have every option open, rather than at the quay.
Grade and governing standard, the test methods the COA will report, the inspection arrangement and the quantity basis are put in writing. Whatever is left vague at this point is precisely what any later disagreement will be argued over, which is why it repays going slowly.
The signed contract governs from here. Cargo is prepared and packed, inspection takes place where it was agreed, and the paperwork accumulates in the order the shipment produces it: packing list and commercial invoice from the load, bill of lading from the carrier, certificate of origin from the issuing chamber, the batch Certificate of Analysis from the laboratory and the safety data sheet from the product file. The thread stays open across all of it, so every earlier answer remains readable.
The technical library on this site covers eight bitumen product families and seven related petroleum products, and publishes destination pages for India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, China, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania, South Africa and the Middle East. Those destination pages describe route, packing and documentation considerations for each market; they are coverage of a market, not a record of shipments made to it.
60/70, 80/100, 85/100, 50/70, 70/100, 40/50, 30/40, 20/30, 120/150 and 200/300, classified by needle penetration at 25 °C under ASTM D5, EN 1426 or IS 1203.
VG10, VG20, VG30 and VG40 under IS 73:2013, classified by absolute viscosity at 60 °C. Relevant wherever an Indian or Indian-derived specification governs the project.
PG 52-10 through PG 70-10, classified by the pavement temperature range the binder is required to survive under AASHTO M320. Cannot be inferred from a penetration number.
85/25, 90/15, 95/25 and 115/15 for roofing, waterproofing and industrial use, plus enamel grade bitumen for pipeline coating applications.
MC-30, MC-70, MC-250 and MC-800 cutbacks, cationic and anionic emulsions, and polymer modified bitumen where a project specification calls for a modified binder.
Base oil, fuel oil, CST-180, EN590 diesel, LPG, sulfur and urea. The same five questions govern them — specification, quantity, packing, port and delivery term — so name the product and the enquiry can be framed the same way.
Some questions have no honest short answer, and a supplier who gives one anyway is telling you something about how the rest of the transaction will go.
The section above sets out why the five missing items make this unanswerable. The useful move, when you are screening several suppliers at once, is to turn the question around. Whoever does send a confident number against a one-line enquiry should be asked which packing, which port and which delivery term that number assumes. Some will produce a coherent set of assumptions, which tells you they priced something real and you can now compare it properly. Others will not be able to say, which tells you the figure was chosen to keep you in the conversation rather than to describe a cargo.
The floor is set by how the cargo physically moves, not by a policy number. Containerised material is bought by the container: eighty drums fill a 20 ft unit whatever the fill weight, which puts one container between 12 MT and 14.8 MT drummed, or 20 MT in one-tonne bags. Below a full container there is no shipment to arrange, only a courier problem. Bulk sits at a different scale entirely, because a parcel has to be found on a vessel or a vessel part-chartered around it. Send the quantity you genuinely want rather than a round number chosen to look serious, and the options that exist at that size can be set against it.
Not answerable from a grade name alone. Two binders can share a penetration band and still behave differently, because penetration says nothing about temperature susceptibility or ageing behaviour. Send the specification document. A specification is a list of properties with test methods and acceptance limits, and it can be checked line by line — which is the only form of the answer that is worth having when an engineer has to sign off the material.
They are compared commercially and cover a similar paving application, but they are measured by different tests under different standards, and a 60/70 cargo does not automatically satisfy a VG-30 specification. Where a project names a grade, supply that grade and have any substitution approved in writing by the engineer. The grade equivalence page on this site sets out the cross-references and, more usefully, their limits.
Import duty, national subheadings under HS 2713.20, port charges, demurrage terms and inland haulage are destination-specific and are your customs broker's territory rather than the seller's. What can be quoted is a delivery term that puts a defined portion of that chain on the seller — which is exactly what the Incoterm choice is for.
No delivery date can be given on a web page, and none is given here. A shipment window belongs in an offer that has been built against a defined cargo and a defined route, and then in a contract. Treat a delivery promise made before the cargo is defined as what it is — an unsupported statement made to win an enquiry.
Export enquiries cross languages, time zones and measurement conventions. These are the small disciplines that prevent expensive misunderstandings later.
Write metric tonnes rather than tons, and say whether a drum weight is net or gross. A tonne, a short ton and a long ton are three different quantities, and the difference is large enough to matter over a full container.
Give dates as a written month rather than a numeric format that reads differently in different countries, and say 20 ft or 40 ft rather than leaving container size to be inferred from a tonnage.
A full PDF page of a specification can be checked against an offer line by line. A cropped screenshot usually cannot, and the cropped part is regularly the acceptance limit that decides the answer.
Say which requirements come from the project specification and which are your own preference. Room to move on packing or on the discharge port usually shows up in the landed cost; room to move on grade almost never does, because the grade is what an engineer has signed against.
If you are pricing two grades or two destinations at once, label them plainly in the message. Two half-defined requirements in one paragraph produce two half-usable answers.
If a point is settled in a call, restate it in the thread in one line. It costs a few seconds and it converts a recollection into a record that both sides can read the same way.
By WhatsApp on +971 56 144 5733. That is the only enquiry channel published on this site. Send the product and grade, quantity, packing, destination port and the Incoterm you want quoted, and the enquiry can be worked on from the first message.
No second channel is published on this site. The WhatsApp number above is the only contact detail given here. If contact details, bank details or an address reach you from any other source claiming to be this desk, verify them through the number on this page before acting on them — impersonation of suppliers is a known problem in commodity trade.
Two lines are the absolute floor: what the product is, and how much of it. That much starts a conversation. What produces a number you can put into a bid is the full set — grade with its governing standard, packing and net weight per unit, the named discharge port, the Incoterms 2020 rule, the loading window, the documents you need issued and the payment instrument you can obtain. The checklist table above gives each item alongside the reason it changes the answer.
An indication is a planning figure given with its assumptions stated, and it normally carries no validity period. A firm offer is a priced commitment against a cargo you have defined precisely — grade and standard, packing and net weight, named port, Incoterm, shipment window, documentation and payment terms — and it is valid for a stated period. Say which you need and you will get that one.
Because those two items change the cost structure rather than the margin. Quantity determines whether the cargo moves in containers or as a vessel parcel, and destination determines the freight, which on many routes is a substantial share of the landed cost. A price quoted without them will change once they are known, which makes it less useful than no price at all.
Yes. Specification questions, grade equivalence, packing and container loading arithmetic, handling temperature ranges, which test methods a Certificate of Analysis should report, and questions about the related petroleum products listed on this site are all reasonable things to ask. If the answer is that something cannot be determined without a document, that is what you will be told.
Yes, and it is the single most useful thing you can send. A specification document removes every assumption about grade, governing standard, test methods and acceptance limits at once. Send it as a complete page or file rather than a cropped image, because the acceptance limit that decides the answer is often in the part that gets cropped.
It changes what is useful to send you rather than whether you get an answer. An intermediary usually needs a document set and a specification presentation their own client will accept, and needs to know early which items can be named in writing. Say where you sit in the chain in the first message and the response can be shaped around it.
Open WhatsApp on +971 56 144 5733 with the product and grade, the quantity, the packing, the discharge port and the Incoterm you want quoted. Add whether you need a budget indication or a firm offer, and attach the project specification if you have one.