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Product and specification
The exact grade and the governing standard, not just a grade name. "Bitumen 60/70 to ASTM D946" is a specification; "bitumen 60/70 or equivalent" is not.
Every field is optional except grade and quantity. The message updates as you type, and you can edit it directly before sending.
If an offer you receive is missing any of these twelve, it is not a quotation — it is an indication. Ask for the rest before you plan around it. The table underneath sets the same list out line by line, with what a thin offer says instead and what the gap costs.
The exact grade and the governing standard, not just a grade name. "Bitumen 60/70 to ASTM D946" is a specification; "bitumen 60/70 or equivalent" is not.
The packing type and the net weight per unit, stated separately from the tare. This is what determines container count and freight cost.
The price with the Incoterms 2020 rule and the named port or place. A price without an Incoterm cannot be compared against another price.
How long the price holds. Bitumen tracks crude and freight, so an offer without a validity date is not something you can build a tender around.
Whether a batch Certificate of Analysis will be issued, what test methods it will cover, and whether third-party inspection is available.
The payment structure and the shipment window, so you can check both against what your bank and your project schedule will actually accept.
The tonnage, whether it is net product weight or gross, the tolerance and who exercises it. Where payment is by documentary credit and the quantity is not expressed in packing units, UCP 600 Article 30(b) supplies a tolerance of 5 % more or less whether or not you wanted one.
Who nominates the inspector, who pays, and what the scope covers. A scope that covers quality and quantity but is silent on packing condition and marking is the scope under which reconditioned drums pass.
Whether the certificates issued at the load point are final and binding or whether you may test at discharge, and the route for resolving a difference between two laboratories — ASTM D3244 combines both results into an assigned test value using the precision statement of the test method itself.
The currency and the unit, and whether the price is firm for the validity period or linked to a published quotation. If it is linked, the offer has to name the source, the averaging period and the adjustment date, otherwise it is not a formula but a right to re-quote.
The Harmonized System subheading the seller will declare. Petroleum bitumen sits in HS 2713.20; cutbacks and emulsions are bituminous mixtures under heading 2715. Duty is assessed on the classification, not on the product name.
Whether the cargo is consigned as dangerous goods and under which entry, and a safety data sheet in the 16-section format of the UN Globally Harmonized System in the language the destination requires. This decides package marks, the document set and which carriers will take the booking.
Read any offer against this list. A serious quotation is a document the other party could perform against without a further question being asked; a broker's forward is a price attached to a grade name and a tonnage. The difference shows up in sixteen lines, and every one of them is a line you can ask for by name in a single message. The first twelve describe the cargo and the money. The last four describe the frame the deal sits in, and they are the ones buyers discover late, because they cost nothing until they cost everything.
| Line | What a serious offer states | What a thin offer says instead | What the gap costs you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grade and governing standard | The grade, the standard that governs it and the edition: penetration grade to ASTM D946 or EN 12591, viscosity grade to IS 73:2013, performance grade to AASHTO M320 or ASTM D6373, oxidized grade to ASTM D312, cutback to ASTM D2027 (medium curing) or D2028 (rapid curing), emulsion to ASTM D977, ASTM D2397 or EN 13808 — with the full limit table attached as a schedule. | "Bitumen 60/70", or "60/70 or equivalent", sometimes with a data sheet of round numbers. | 60/70 is a penetration band and nothing else. A cargo can sit inside 60–70 dmm by ASTM D5 and still fail solubility by ASTM D2042, ductility by ASTM D113 or retained penetration after the thin film oven test. Naming the standard is what makes every other line testable. |
| Quantity, basis and tolerance | The tonnage, whether the basis is net product weight or gross, the tolerance in per cent, who exercises it, and whether the figure is one shipment or a total to be called off over a period. | A tonnage on its own. | Tolerance is where quantity arguments begin. Under UCP 600 Article 30(b) a tolerance of 5 % more or less is allowed where the quantity is not stated in packing units or individual items, provided the drawing does not exceed the credit amount; Article 30(a) reads "about" or "approximately" as 10 % more or less. If the contract is silent, the credit rules fill the silence and they do not fill it in your favour. |
| Packing and net weight per unit | The packing type, the net product weight per unit stated separately from tare, and for steel drums whether they are new and unused or reconditioned, with steel thickness, interior finish, closure type and the markings each drum will carry — grade, batch number, net weight, tare weight. | "New steel drums" with no weight, or a gross figure with the tare folded in. | Net weight per unit sets the drum count, the container count and therefore the freight. It is also the line reconditioned drums arrive against, because an order that does not say new, unused and non-reconditioned has not excluded them, and reconditioned drums are a legitimate product at a legitimate lower price. |
| Loading plan and container count | How the tonnage is made up: units per container, net tonnage per container, and the resulting container count, so the figure is arithmetic rather than an assumption. | A tonnage with no indication of how it stows. | On the loading figures used throughout this site a 20 ft container takes 80 steel drums — 12 MT at 150 kg net, 14.4 MT at 180 kg, 14.8 MT at 185 kg — or 20 jumbo bags of 1 MT for 20 MT. The same 1,000 MT is 84 containers in 150 kg drums and 50 in jumbo bags. Freight, terminal handling and documentation are charged per container, not per tonne. |
| Incoterm, named place and edition | The rule, the named port or place written out in full, and the edition: for example CIF Nhava Sheva, Incoterms 2020, or FCA followed by the full name and address of the container terminal, Incoterms 2020. | "CIF price", or "FOB" with no place, or a rule with no edition. | A rule without a named place does not fix where cost and risk change hands, and FCA at a seller's premises is a different transaction from FCA at a container terminal. A rule without an edition leaves it open which text applies: Incoterms 2020 changed the minimum insurance cover under CIP, replaced DAT with DPU, and added an on-board bill of lading option under FCA. |
| Price basis and what sits inside it | Currency, unit, whether the unit is net or gross, and an explicit list of what the price includes: packing, palletisation, lashing and strapping, inland haulage at origin, origin terminal handling, export documentation, and whether inspection is inside the price or additional. | A number per metric tonne. | Packing, palletisation and origin terminal charges are the three items most often quoted outside the price and then invoiced. Ask for the inclusions in the offer rather than discovering them in the proforma, because at that stage they are no longer negotiable. |
| Validity, and what it is measured against | A date and a time by which acceptance must be received, and a statement of whether the validity covers the product price only or the landed price including freight. | "Subject to prior sale", "subject to our final confirmation", or no validity at all. | An offer whose acceptance still requires the seller's confirmation is not a firm offer and cannot be built into a tender. Where the price is CFR, CIF, CPT or CIP, the freight behind it was quoted to the seller with its own and usually shorter validity, so a landed price can expire in two parts on two different days. |
| Payment instrument, in full | The instrument and the rules it runs under — an irrevocable documentary credit at sight under UCP 600, a documentary collection on documents against payment under URC 522, an advance and balance split, a demand guarantee under URDG 758 or a standby under ISP98 — plus latest shipment date, credit expiry date and place of expiry, presentation period, and which side bears which bank charges. | "L/C or TT", or "100 % TT in advance". | UCP 600 Article 14(c) requires a presentation containing one or more original transport documents to be made no later than 21 calendar days after the date of shipment and in any event by expiry; Article 14(b) allows each bank five banking days to examine. An instrument named without those dates is not yet workable, and the charges clause is a real cost line that is routinely left to whoever reads it last. |
| Document list, named one by one | Every document that will be issued, by whom, and in how many originals: commercial invoice, packing list showing net and gross per unit, full set of original bills of lading, certificate of origin and the body attesting it, batch Certificate of Analysis with the test method beside every value, safety data sheet in the format and language the destination requires, weight certificate, and an insurance certificate where the rule requires one. | "All export documents will be provided." | The document list 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 at some destinations regardless of what is in the container. |
| Inspection basis | Who nominates the inspector, who pays and to whom the report is addressed; the scope, covering quality, quantity, packing condition and marking, container sealing, and the drawing and sealing of retained samples; the sampling practice (ASTM D140, AASHTO T 40 or EN 58); and whether the certificate is a required document under the payment instrument. | "SGS available on request", or "inspection at buyer's cost". | An inspection scope silent on packing is the scope under which reconditioned drums pass. A certificate that is not a required document under the payment instrument has no commercial force, and one addressed to the seller rather than to you has been read by the seller first. Inspection bodies work to ISO/IEC 17020 and laboratories to ISO/IEC 17025 — two different accreditations for two different jobs. |
| Where quality and quantity become final | Whether the certificates of quality and quantity issued at the load point are final and binding, or whether you retain a right to test at discharge, with the resolution route named: ASTM D3244 uses the published precision statement of the test method to combine a supplier result and a receiver result into a single assigned test value. | Nothing at all. The clause is simply absent. | This one clause decides who carries a difference between two laboratories, and it is the clause buyers most often meet for the first time after a dispute has already started. Silence favours whoever is holding the certificate, which is not you. |
| Shipment window and its trigger | A period tied to a trigger event — so many days from receipt of a workable credit, or from receipt of the advance — rather than a bare calendar date, together with whether partial shipment and transhipment are allowed. | "Prompt shipment", or "ready stock". | A calendar date agreed before a credit is opened becomes unachievable the moment the bank is slow, and then somebody needs an amendment and somebody pays for it. Partial shipments are allowed under UCP 600 Article 31(a) unless the credit prohibits them, and Article 20(c) allows a bill of lading to show transhipment in defined circumstances even where the credit prohibits it, so if either matters to you it belongs in the contract as well as in the credit. |
| Currency, and whether the price is fixed or indexed | The currency and the unit, and which of two things the number is: a price firm for the whole validity period, or a price linked to a published quotation. If it is linked, the offer names the source, the averaging period, the adjustment date and any cap or floor. On a call-off contract it also says when the price is re-fixed and how much notice you get. | A figure per metric tonne with a currency symbol and nothing else, or a twelve-month programme price with no adjustment mechanism at all. | A fixed price and an indexed price at the same headline figure are different products, and comparing them as if they were the same is a category error rather than a small one. A firm price held open across a long tender validity is an option the seller has written for nothing, which is why the sellers who understand that either price it in or quietly withdraw. An indexed price with no named source, no averaging period and no adjustment date is not a formula — it is a right to re-quote, held by the other side. |
| Customs classification and origin documents | The Harmonized System subheading the seller will declare at export and the origin document that will be issued, with the body issuing it and whether it is non-preferential or claimed under a trade agreement. Petroleum bitumen, including oxidized grades, sits in HS subheading 2713.20; cutbacks and emulsions are bituminous mixtures and fall in heading 2715. National tariffs extend the six-digit subheading to eight or ten digits. | "Certificate of origin will be provided." | Duty is assessed on the classification, not on the product name, so a cutback quoted as though it were paving bitumen can land on a tariff line your budget never saw. Preferential origin is judged against rules written at heading level, so the heading has to be settled before anyone can say whether a preferential certificate is even available. The Harmonized System is revised on a five-year cycle, and whichever Incoterms rule you agree, the legal responsibility for a customs declaration sits with the declarant — which at import is normally you. |
| Transport classification and the safety data sheet | Whether the cargo will be consigned as dangerous goods and under which entry, plus a safety data sheet in the 16-section format of the UN Globally Harmonized System, in the language the destination requires. Paving grades in drums at ambient temperature are normally not regulated for transport. Cutback bitumen is listed as UN 1999, TARS, LIQUID, including road oils and cutback bitumens, in Class 3. Product shipped at or above 100 °C and below its flash point falls under UN 3257, elevated temperature liquid, in Class 9. | "MSDS available on request." | Classification decides the package marks, whether a dangerous goods declaration is required, which carriers and which vessels will accept the booking, and therefore the freight. An unregulated drummed paving grade and a Class 3 cutback do not move on the same terms and their landed costs are not comparable. MSDS is a superseded term for a document most regimes now require in a defined 16-section format and in their own official language, and a sheet in the wrong format or language is refused at the border regardless of what is in the container. |
| Governing law, forum and force majeure | The governing law, the dispute forum — arbitration under named rules and at a named seat, or the courts of a named country — and whether the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods applies or is excluded, since it applies automatically between parties whose places of business are in contracting states unless the contract excludes it under Article 6. Plus a force majeure and hardship wording that names the qualifying events, the notice period and what happens if the impediment persists, rather than gesturing at circumstances beyond control. | Nothing at all, or a single line naming a city that nobody has checked is a workable seat. | This is the clause that decides what every other clause is worth. An arbitral award is recognised and enforced in more than 170 contracting states under the New York Convention 1958, on the limited refusal grounds set out in its Article V; a court judgment has no comparably wide enforcement regime, so a judgment won at home can be unenforceable where the assets are. The CISG is also not universal — the United Kingdom and India are not contracting states — so on those routes the chosen national law is doing all the work and needs to be a law somebody has actually read. |
The Incoterm decides who arranges transport, who carries the risk and at what point it transfers. For bitumen the practical choice is usually between three of them.
| Rule | Seller arranges | Risk transfers | Suits a buyer who |
|---|---|---|---|
| EXW | Nothing beyond making goods available | At the seller's premises | Has a freight forwarder in the country of origin |
| FCA | Delivery to the carrier at a named place | On handover to the carrier | Buys containerised cargo and controls its own shipping |
| FAS | Delivery alongside the vessel at the named port | Once the goods are alongside the ship | Charters its own vessel for a bulk parcel and wants the seller only to bring the cargo to the quay |
| FOB | Delivery on board the vessel | Once loaded on board | Books its own vessel; correct for bulk, not for containers |
| CFR | Freight to the destination port | At the load port, before the sea leg | Wants a landed freight cost but arranges its own insurance |
| CIF | Freight plus minimum insurance | At the load port, before the sea leg | Wants one number covering product, freight and basic cover |
| CPT / CIP | Carriage, and for CIP insurance, to destination | On handover to the first carrier | Buys containerised cargo — the correct alternative to CFR and CIF |
| DAP | Everything to a named destination place | At the destination place, before unloading | Wants delivery inland but will clear import itself |
| DPU | Everything to a named place including unloading there | After the goods are unloaded at the named place | Needs the cargo off the vehicle at destination — the only rule under which the seller unloads |
| DDP | Everything including import clearance and duty | At the final delivery point | Wants no involvement at all — rarely advisable for the seller |
The Incoterms rules are not a ranking from worst to best, and there is no rule that is generally advantageous to buyers. They are a way of cutting one journey into legs and assigning each leg to whichever party can arrange it more cheaply, more reliably or with less exposure. Ask for the rule that puts each leg with the party better placed to perform it, and price the rest.
An Incoterms rule allocates four things between seller and buyer: who arranges and pays for carriage; where the risk of loss of or damage to the goods transfers; who handles export and import formalities and the security-related requirements that now sit alongside them; and which party provides which transport, insurance and clearance documents.
It does not do four other things, and every one of those omissions has caused an argument.
A container of bitumen makes the same journey whoever pays for it: collection and inland haulage at origin, export clearance, origin terminal handling and loading, the main carriage, cargo insurance, import clearance and duty, destination terminal handling, on-carriage, and unloading. For each leg ask three questions. Who has a rate on this lane already? Who can act legally in this jurisdiction — as exporter of record at one end, importer of record at the other? And if it goes wrong, who is able to chase it?
The Incoterms rule you should ask for is simply the one whose split matches your answers. Everything else is habit.
Ask for FCA for containerised cargo, or FOB for a bulk parcel, and buy the rest yourself when any of the following is true.
Ask for CPT or CIP for containers, or CFR or CIF for bulk, when the balance runs the other way.
Under Incoterms 2020 the seller's minimum insurance obligation is not the same under CIF and CIP. Under CIF the seller need only provide cover complying with Institute Cargo Clauses (C) or similar clauses — a restricted, named-perils cover. Under CIP the minimum was raised to Institute Cargo Clauses (A), which is all-risks cover. Both require a minimum of 110 % of the contract value of the goods, in the currency of the contract, from the point of delivery to the named destination.
The practical consequence is uncomfortable. A buyer taking CIF on drummed cargo receives the narrowest of the standard covers on the packing most exposed to handling damage, and the seller has complied fully with the rule. If you want CIF and you want real cover, agree in the contract that the seller will provide Institute Cargo Clauses (A) and say so in the offer request — the rule expressly allows the parties to agree higher cover. Otherwise ask for CFR and insure it under your own policy.
Under all four C rules — CFR, CIF, CPT and CIP — the seller pays for carriage to destination but risk has already transferred at origin. That split is deliberate and it is the single most misunderstood feature of the system. Cargo damaged on the sea leg under CIF is your loss and an insurance claim, not a claim against the seller, even though the seller booked the vessel and paid the freight. Do not read a C rule as "the seller is responsible until it arrives". Only the D rules — DAP, DPU and DDP — keep risk with the seller to the destination.
FAS, FOB, CFR and CIF are drafted for sea and inland waterway transport and are built around the moment goods are placed on board. A container of drummed bitumen is handed to the carrier at an inland depot or a terminal, often several days before the vessel arrives, and the seller loses physical control at that moment rather than at loading. FCA, CPT and CIP put the delivery point where the handover actually happens.
The usual objection is documentary: a documentary credit demanding an on-board bill of lading appears to force FOB or CFR. Incoterms 2020 addressed exactly this. Under FCA, the parties may agree that the buyer will instruct its carrier to issue a transport document stating that the goods have been loaded on board, and that the seller is to provide it to the buyer. That option is what makes FCA workable under a credit, and it is worth writing into the contract when you ask for it rather than discovering the gap after the credit is issued.
Under DAP the seller delivers the goods ready for unloading at the named place and the buyer clears import. Under DPU the seller also unloads — it is the only rule in the set that obliges the seller to unload, so it is the rule to name when your site cannot discharge a container itself. Under DDP the seller clears import and bears duty and, unless the contract excludes it, import taxes.
DDP is the rule buyers most often ask for and the one they should ask for least often. It requires the seller to be able 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. The result is a DDP price built on a customs arrangement the seller cannot actually execute, discovered at the port. Ask for DAP or DPU and clear import yourself unless the seller can demonstrate it holds that standing at your destination.
Every rule except EXW puts export formalities on the seller, and every rule except DDP puts import formalities on the buyer. What no rule allocates is how the goods are classified, and classification is what decides the duty. Ask which Harmonized System subheading the seller will declare at export — 2713.20 for petroleum bitumen including oxidized grades, heading 2715 for cutbacks and emulsions, which are bituminous mixtures rather than bitumen — and check that it agrees with the heading your own broker intends to use at import. A disagreement between the export declaration, the certificate of origin and your import entry is a query at the border, and the person who has to answer it is the declarant. Under FCA, FOB and all four C rules the declarant at import is you, whoever arranged the freight, and the legal responsibility for the accuracy of that entry does not travel with the Incoterms rule. Where you intend to claim preferential duty under a trade agreement, settle the heading before you ask for the certificate: origin criteria are written at heading level, so the answer to "does this qualify" changes when the classification does.
The rule is only half of the term. "FCA" alone is ambiguous, because FCA at the seller's premises and FCA at a named container terminal put loading, haulage and risk in different places. Name the place as precisely as the rule allows: a full terminal name, a full delivery address, a specific port.
Then settle two destination items in writing, because they are the ones that generate double billing. First, terminal handling at destination: under a C rule the seller's contract of carriage may or may not include it, and where it does not, the carrier will bill you for it as well as billing the seller for freight. Second, free time. Demurrage and detention beyond the carrier's free days are your cost under every C rule and under D rules up to the named place, and free time is set by the carrier's tariff, not by the Incoterms rule. On drummed cargo that has to be devanned by hand, free time is a real risk and it is worth asking the carrier what it is before agreeing a term.
Ask for the same cargo on two rules — FOB and CFR for bulk, FCA and CPT for containers. The difference between the two numbers is precisely what the seller is charging for the leg between them. Put that figure next to your own forwarder's quotation for the same lane and you have obtained two things without negotiating anything: a check on the freight, and a check on whether the seller is close enough to the logistics to price it sensibly. A seller who cannot produce both numbers is quoting a leg it has not actually arranged. There is more on how those components move in what drives the price, and the rules themselves are set out at greater length on the Incoterms and export terms page.
Two offers for the same grade are almost never comparable as printed. More money is lost in bitumen procurement here than to outright fraud — not to a criminal, but to a cheaper-looking price that was measured against a different basis and won. Normalise first, then compare. The gap usually shrinks to a fraction of what it looked like, and what remains is a question worth asking.
This is the largest adjustment and the easiest to forget, because both numbers are denominated per tonne and look like the same kind of thing. An FOB or FCA offer stops at origin; a CIF or CIP offer stops at the destination port. There is no ratio that converts one into the other. Get your forwarder to quote the missing legs on the same lane for the same container count, add them to the shorter offer, and add destination terminal handling, documentation and customs entry to both. Only then are you looking at two comparable figures.
Confirm in writing that the unit price applies to net product weight with drum tare excluded, and that the packing list will show net and gross separately for each unit. A gross-weight basis sells you the steel at the bitumen price, on every shipment, quietly.
The arithmetic is easy to run. One thousand tonnes net in 150 kg drums is 6,667 drums; in 180 kg drums it is 5,556; in 185 kg drums it is 5,406. Ask each supplier for the tare weight per drum — the packer knows it, and it should be marked on the drum — multiply it by the drum count, and price that mass at the offered rate. That number is what the weight basis is worth on this cargo, and it is usually larger than the price difference you were arguing about.
There is a cross-check available before payment that costs nothing. Under SOLAS Chapter VI, Regulation 2, as amended and in force since 1 July 2016, the shipper must declare a verified gross mass for every packed container before it is loaded. Take the declared verified gross mass, subtract the container tare marked on the door under ISO 6346, subtract the total drum tare, and the remainder should land close to the invoiced net product weight. A material gap is a question to ask before funds move, not after.
Freight, terminal handling and documentation are charged per container. Packing therefore changes the landed cost even when the product price per tonne is identical. On the loading figures used throughout this site, a 1,000 MT order works out as follows.
The same tonnage therefore moves in 84 container movements or in 50, depending only on how it is packed — roughly two-thirds more container-level cost on the drummed option before a single tonne of bitumen has been priced. That does not make bags automatically cheaper landed: drums tolerate rough handling, can be stored outdoors, can be sold on individually and need no special discharge equipment, while bags need a means of lifting and a way to melt the contents. The point is that the comparison is not valid until both offers have been converted into container counts. The tonnage and volume conversions page carries the same arithmetic for other lot sizes.
Ask each offer to state the gross weight per container it has assumed, not only the net tonnage, because the gross figure is what your haulier and your terminal work to. ISO 668 rates a 20 ft general purpose container at a maximum gross mass of 30,480 kg, and the container's own tare is marked on the door plate. Eighty drums at 185 kg net is 14,800 kg of product before any steel is counted, so add the drum tare, which the packer can give you and which should be marked on the drum, and the container tare from the plate, and you have a figure you can check. In practice the container rating is rarely the constraint that binds. A road weight limit at one end or the other, or a carrier payload cap on the lane, usually bites first, and both are set by a regulator or a carrier tariff rather than by the offer. Establishing that number before booking is the difference between one movement and a re-stuff at the terminal.
Compare new and unused against new and unused. If one offer states steel thickness, interior finish, closure type and drum markings and the other says "new steel drums", you are comparing a specification with a description. Establish for both whether pallets, strapping, corner protection and liners are inside the price, and whether the drum itself is inside the price or invoiced separately.
Reconditioned drums deserve a clear statement rather than a suspicion. They are a legitimate product with a legitimate market and a correct, lower price. They become a problem only when they are supplied against an order that did not exclude them, which is why the words new, unused and non-reconditioned belong in the contract and drum condition belongs in the inspection scope.
Ask both suppliers for the same three things and see which answers change. Will a batch Certificate of Analysis be issued, with a batch number, sampling and test dates and the test method beside every value — or is what is on offer a technical data sheet? Is third-party inspection inside the price, outside it, or unavailable? Will sealed retained samples be drawn at the load point and held by both sides?
An inspection fee quoted inside one price and outside the other is a straight arithmetic difference and easily corrected. A difference in scope is not. Two inspection quotations that both say "quality and quantity" can differ by whether packing condition, marking, container sealing and retained samples are included, and that difference is worth far more than the fee.
Credit terms are money and should be priced as money. Convert any deferred payment period at your own cost of funds — price multiplied by your rate multiplied by days divided by 360 — and state which day-count convention you used, because 360 and 365 are both in use and they are not the same answer. A sight offer and a 90-day offer at the same headline price are not the same price.
Then allocate the bank charges the same way on both. The clause providing that all charges outside the country of the issuing bank are for the beneficiary's account is common practice rather than a rule, and it is negotiable. Confirmation of a credit is a further cost driven by bank and country risk rather than by anything about the cargo, so an offer that requires a confirmed credit carries a cost an otherwise identical offer does not. All of these belong in the comparison, and none of them appears on the price line.
Two things hide on this line. The first is the currency. If one offer is denominated in the currency your credit will actually be issued in and the other is not, the difference between the two numbers includes a movement neither party controls, and it is carried by whichever side agreed to the conversion without saying so. Ask for both offers in the currency you will pay in, or convert both at a stated rate on a stated date and record that date inside the comparison so the working can be audited later.
The second is the mechanism. A price firm for the whole validity period and a price linked to a published quotation are different products, and at the same headline figure the linked one is cheaper for the seller and dearer in risk for you. If either offer is indexed, get the source, the averaging period, the adjustment date and any cap or floor before comparing, because an index reference without those four items is not a formula — it is a right to re-quote, and it belongs to the other side. On a call-off programme, establish as well how often the price re-fixes and what notice you receive, because a programme priced firm for twelve months contains an option the seller has written for nothing, and an option written for nothing is the one that gets withdrawn at the least convenient moment.
Compare only offers that are firm and dated. An offer marked "subject to prior sale" or "subject to our final confirmation" is an indication: price it as one, and do not put it into a tender. Remember also that a landed price can expire in two parts, because the freight behind a CFR or CIF number carries its own and usually shorter validity than the product price.
Fix the tolerance and say who exercises it. Where the quantity is not stated in packing units and payment is by credit, UCP 600 Article 30(b) supplies a 5 % tolerance whether or not either party asked for one, and a tolerance exercised consistently in one direction is a real transfer of value across a supply programme. Then settle whether quality and quantity are final at the load point or testable at discharge, and name ASTM D3244 as the route for resolving a difference between two laboratories. A counterparty who declines a published resolution practice is telling you what it expects an independent retest to show.
This is the axis almost nobody normalises, because it carries no number. Two offers at the same price under different governing law, different forums and different force majeure wordings are two different risks, and the difference becomes visible only on the day something goes wrong, which is the day it can no longer be negotiated.
Check four things on both offers. First, the governing law and the dispute forum. An arbitral award is recognised and enforced in more than 170 contracting states under the New York Convention 1958, subject to the limited refusal grounds in its Article V, whereas a court judgment has no comparably wide enforcement regime — so an offer that leaves you holding a judgment enforceable only where the seller keeps no assets has given you a remedy on paper. Second, whether the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods applies. It applies automatically between parties whose places of business are in contracting states unless the contract excludes it under Article 6, so one offer excluding it and another leaving it in place are running on different default rules for conformity, notice and remedy. It is also not universal: the United Kingdom and India are not contracting states, and on those routes the chosen national law does all the work. Third, the notice and claim window. Where the CISG governs, Article 38 requires the buyer to examine the goods within as short a period as is practicable in the circumstances, and Article 39(1) requires notice specifying the nature of the lack of conformity within a reasonable time after it was or ought to have been discovered, with 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. A binder problem that surfaces in a pavement eighteen months on is inside that long-stop; whether it survives the reasonable-time test is usually decided by whether anyone tested and gave notice promptly, which is exactly what sealed retained samples and a discharge test are for. Fourth, any limitation or exclusion of liability, and whether the force majeure and hardship wording names its qualifying events, its notice period and what happens if the impediment persists. The ICC publishes model force majeure and hardship clauses that either party can adopt by reference, and an offer that has done so has at least been drafted rather than assembled.
Where two offers differ on this axis, price the difference as the cost of bringing the weaker one up. An arbitration clause at a workable seat costs nothing to ask for before signature and cannot be bought afterwards at any price.
Build the same destination cost stack onto both offers before deciding: terminal handling at destination, documentation and release fees, customs entry, duty and any tax assessed on the landed value under your own tariff basis, free time and any demurrage or detention beyond it, port or yard storage, inland haulage, and discharge labour. For drummed cargo add one more line that is routinely forgotten: 1,000 MT in 150 kg drums delivers 6,667 empty steel drums to your yard along with the bitumen. They have a handling cost, sometimes a residual value and always a place they have to go. On a repeating supply programme that is a budget line, not a rounding error.
Once both offers sit on one basis, most of the apparent difference will have disappeared into weight basis, container count, packing inclusions and payment terms. Whatever remains is either a genuine difference in cost structure — a shorter haul to the port, a larger production run, a better freight contract — or it is a signal. Ask what explains it, and listen for whether the answer is a fact about the material and the route or a story about the seller. Bitumen is a traded commodity with a visible cost structure built on crude, processing, packing and freight, and there is very little room to be dramatically cheaper for the same specification without a reason that can be stated in one sentence. What drives the price sets out where the legitimate differences come from; avoiding fraud sets out what a price below the market usually turns out to be.
Run both offers down this column before you look at the headline numbers again. The worked column uses a 1,000 MT enquiry and the loading figures used throughout this site; substitute your own tonnage and the arithmetic is identical. Almost every line here is a question rather than a concession: it asks the seller to state something it has already assumed, not to move its price.
| What to normalise | How to put both offers on one basis | Worked check on 1,000 MT | What it hides if you skip it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Delivery point | Add your own forwarder's quotation for the missing legs to whichever offer stops earlier, then add destination terminal handling, documentation and customs entry to both. | An FCA or FOB offer and a CIP or CIF offer differ by the entire main carriage plus origin terminal charges. No per-tonne ratio converts one into the other. | The whole freight component, together with origin charges that were quoted outside the price and invoiced later |
| Weight basis | Confirm in writing that the unit price applies to net product weight with drum tare excluded, and that the packing list shows net and gross separately per unit. | 1,000 MT net is 6,667 drums at 150 kg, 5,556 at 180 kg or 5,406 at 185 kg. Ask for the tare per drum, multiply by the drum count and price it at the offered rate. | Drum steel invoiced at the bitumen price, on every shipment, with nothing on the face of the offer to show it |
| Container count | Divide the tonnage by the net tonnage per container for each offer's packing and round up. Freight and terminal charges follow the count, not the tonnage. | 1,000 MT is 84 containers at 12 MT (150 kg drums), 70 at 14.4 MT (180 kg), 68 at 14.8 MT (185 kg) and 50 at 20 MT (1 MT jumbo bags). | Roughly two-thirds more container-level cost on the drummed option than the bagged one before the product has been priced at all |
| Packing specification | Compare new and unused against new and unused, with steel thickness, interior finish, closure type and drum markings stated on both, and pallets, strapping and liners either inside both prices or outside both. | A reconditioned drum offer and a new drum offer are two different products at two correct prices, and the difference is visible only if the contract asked the question. | Reconditioned drums against a new drum order, and packing extras that appear for the first time on the proforma |
| Quality documentation | Require a batch Certificate of Analysis with a batch number and the test method beside every value on both offers, and put inspection on the same footing in both: same scope, same nominating party, same account, same addressee. | An inspection fee inside one price and outside the other is straight arithmetic. Two scopes that both read "quality and quantity" may still differ on packing, marking, sealing and retained samples. | A technical data sheet passed off as a test report, and an inspection scope silent on the one thing that catches packing fraud |
| Payment terms | Convert any credit period to money at your own cost of funds — price × rate × days / 360 — and say which day-count you used. Then allocate bank charges identically in both. | A sight offer and a 90-day offer at the same headline price are not the same price. Confirmation of a credit is a further cost driven by bank and country risk, not by the cargo. | Financing given away in one offer and charged in the other, plus bank charges landing on whichever side read the clause last |
| Validity and firmness | Compare only firm, dated offers. Treat "subject to prior sale" or "subject to final confirmation" as an indication and use it for budgeting only. | A landed price can expire in two parts, because the freight behind a CFR, CIF, CPT or CIP number usually carries a shorter validity than the product price. | A tender built on a number that was never capable of acceptance in the first place |
| Quantity tolerance and finality | Fix the tolerance and who exercises it, and state whether quality and quantity are final at the load point or testable at discharge, naming ASTM D3244 as the resolution route. | Where the quantity is not stated in packing units and payment is by credit, UCP 600 Article 30(b) supplies a 5 % tolerance whether or not either party asked for one. | A tolerance exercised in one direction on every shipment, and a quality dispute with no agreed forum and no retained sample |
| Destination-side costs | Build the identical destination stack onto both offers: terminal handling, documentation, customs entry, duty and any tax on the landed value, free time and demurrage or detention beyond it, storage, inland haulage, discharge labour and, for drums, the empties. | 1,000 MT in 150 kg drums delivers 6,667 empty steel drums to your yard with the bitumen. They carry a handling cost and sometimes a residual value, and on a repeating programme they are a budget line. | The costs that arrive after the award has been made, when there is nothing left to renegotiate |
| Currency and price mechanism | Get both offers in the currency your credit will actually be issued in, or convert both at a stated rate on a stated date and record that date inside the comparison. Then establish for each whether the price is firm for the validity or linked to a published quotation. | An indexed offer has to name four things before it can be compared with a firm one: the source, the averaging period, the adjustment date, and any cap or floor. Missing any of them, it is a right to re-quote rather than a formula. | A currency movement carried by whichever side never raised it, and a long programme priced firm — an option the seller wrote for nothing and can be expected to withdraw |
| Customs and transport classification | Ask both sellers which Harmonized System subheading they will declare at export, whether the cargo will be consigned as dangerous goods, and require a safety data sheet in the format and language your destination accepts. | Petroleum bitumen sits in HS subheading 2713.20 while cutbacks and emulsions fall in heading 2715. Cutback bitumen is listed as UN 1999 in Class 3, and product shipped at or above 100 °C and below its flash point as UN 3257 in Class 9. | A duty line neither budget contained, and a freight comparison between a regulated and an unregulated cargo that was never like for like |
| Governing law, forum and claim window | Read the governing law, forum, force majeure and liability wording on both offers, and establish whether the CISG applies or has been excluded under its Article 6. | An arbitral award is recognised in more than 170 New York Convention states; a court judgment has no equivalent regime. Under the CISG, notice of a lack of conformity is due within a reasonable time and in any event within two years of handing over under Article 39(2). | A remedy that exists on paper and nowhere the seller keeps assets, and a claim window that closed quietly while the cargo was already in the pavement |
Bitumen export has a fraud problem. Rather than ask you to take anything on trust, here is the checklist that protects you against any supplier. Apply it to us as rigorously as you apply it to anyone else.
The single most effective protection is not a document, it is the payment structure. A documentary letter of credit releases funds only against shipping documents that prove the cargo exists and has been shipped. Where an L/C is impractical, a substantial balance payable against a third-party inspection certificate and a bill of lading achieves much of the same effect. A full advance payment to a new counterparty removes every protection you have.
Appoint SGS, Intertek, Bureau Veritas or an equivalent, and make their certificate a condition of payment. They sample under supervision, seal retained samples and issue a report that neither party wrote. On a container load it converts every quality and quantity question from an argument into a document.
Ask a specific technical question and see what comes back. Which ageing test does IS 73:2013 specify — TFOT or RTFOT? Which flash point method applies to a cutback? What is the solubility minimum and why does it matter? A genuine supplier answers directly. An intermediary who has never handled the product deflects, or sends a specification sheet that does not answer the question.
Company name, address and bank details should match across the proforma invoice, the contract and the payment instruction. Any request to pay a different account than the one on the contract should stop the transaction immediately — invoice interception is the most common fraud in commodity trade, and it usually arrives as a plausible email about a change of bank.
Bitumen is a traded commodity with a visible cost structure built on crude, processing, packing and freight. An offer materially below the market is not a bargain, it is a signal. Either the specification is not what it says, the packing is reconditioned rather than new, or the cargo does not exist.
A technical data sheet describes what the product should be. A Certificate of Analysis reports what a specific batch actually measured, with a batch number and a test date. A supplier who can only produce the first is telling you something about how close they are to the product.
Two identifiers on the shipping documents carry their own arithmetic and can be checked in under a minute each. A container number under ISO 6346 is three letters of owner code, a category identifier of U, J or Z, six digits and a check digit calculated modulo 11, so a number that fails its own check digit cannot belong to a real container. A vessel's IMO number is seven digits in which the last is a check digit formed by multiplying the first six by 7, 6, 5, 4, 3 and 2, summing and taking the rightmost digit of the total. Then confirm the booking, the bill of lading, the vessel and the voyage dates with the carrier through contact details published on the carrier's own site rather than any supplied to you.
Every point above applies to enquiries sent to this desk as well. Ask for the inspection arrangement, ask for the documentation basis in writing before you commit, and structure payment so that it follows performance. Any supplier who objects to that checklist has told you what you needed to know. The full treatment, pattern by pattern, is on the avoiding fraud page.
The sequence a bitumen order follows, so you know what to expect and when.
Grade, quantity, packing, destination and Incoterm are checked against what can actually be supplied on that route, and any gap is raised before pricing rather than after.
A written offer with specification, packing, price basis, validity, documentation and payment terms. Anything that cannot be met is stated plainly instead of being left for the COA to reveal.
Acceptance has to be unqualified to be acceptance, and this is where buyers lose a validity period without realising it. Where the CISG governs, Article 19(1) provides that a reply purporting to accept an offer but containing additions, limitations or other modifications is a rejection and constitutes a counter-offer, and Article 19(3) treats terms relating to price, payment, quality and quantity, place and time of delivery, the extent of a party's liability and the settlement of disputes as material alterations. In practice, "accepted, but on 90 days" has ended the offer rather than concluded a contract, and everything behind it — including the freight quotation the landed price was built on — is free to move. If you intend to accept, accept. If you intend to change a term, say so and ask for the offer to be reissued with a fresh validity.
Grade and governing standard, quantity basis, inspection arrangement and payment structure are fixed in writing. This is the stage that determines how a dispute would be resolved, so it is worth the time.
Where payment is by documentary credit, the draft is read before it is issued: latest shipment date, expiry date and place of expiry, presentation period, the document list, who issues each document and what it must state. UCP 600 Article 14(c) requires a presentation containing an original transport document within 21 calendar days of shipment and by expiry, and Article 14(b) allows each bank five banking days to examine, so the dates have to be workable before anyone ships against them.
Cargo is prepared and packed, inspection is carried out where agreed, and the document set is assembled — invoice, packing list, bill of lading, certificate of origin, COA and SDS.
Documents are presented within the periods the instrument allows. Before release, reconcile the numbers you already hold: the verified gross mass declared under SOLAS Chapter VI Regulation 2, less the container tare marked on the door under ISO 6346, less the total drum tare, against the invoiced net product weight, with seal numbers matching across the bill of lading, the packing list and the inspection certificate. Retained samples stay sealed for the agreed period after discharge, which is what keeps a later quality question answerable.
Test promptly rather than when a problem appears. Where the CISG governs, Article 38 requires the buyer to examine the goods 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 after it was or ought to have been discovered, 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 provides otherwise. Keep the file that would support a claim: contract and specification schedule, batch Certificate of Analysis, inspection report and photographs, transport documents, the weight reconciliation and the location and seal numbers of the retained samples. Then record what the shipment actually cost — container count, gross weight per container, destination charges and free time used — because that is the data that makes the next enquiry sharper than this one.
Most enquiries that go unanswered are not ignored. They are unanswerable: the seller cannot produce a number without inventing several assumptions, and an offer built on invented assumptions is worse than silence, because it will be withdrawn at exactly the moment you have committed to it. Each row is a gap that stops pricing, what it forces the other side to guess, and the sentence that removes it.
| The gap | What it forces the seller to guess | The fix, in one line | What the fix unlocks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Destination given as a country | Which port, which lane, which rate and which import documentation regime applies | Name the discharge port in full, and the inland delivery point if you need one. | A CFR, CIF, CPT or CIP number instead of an origin-only price, and a document list that matches your customs regime |
| No tonnage | Whether this is one container, a vessel parcel or a year's programme | State the tonnage per shipment and, separately, the total over what period. | A price that reflects the actual lot size, and a straight answer on whether a call-off arrangement is possible |
| No packing stated | Drums, jumbo bags, bitutainer, flexitank or bulk vessel — four different cost structures, container counts and document sets | Name the packing, or say you are open to a recommendation and ask for the loading arithmetic with the offer. | A container count you can check yourself, and often a lower landed cost, because packing is where landed cost usually moves without touching the product |
| No delivery term | Where the price is supposed to stop | Name the rule, the named place and the edition, or ask for two rules on the same cargo. | Offers that can be compared with one another at all |
| Grade named with no standard | Which specification the cargo must meet and which tests will be reported | Give the grade with its governing standard and edition, or attach the project specification. | A Certificate of Analysis scope agreed before production rather than argued after discharge |
| "Send your best price" | Everything above, simultaneously | Replace it with four facts: grade, tonnage, packing, destination. | An answer on the first message instead of a day of questions in both directions |
| No indication of stage | Whether this is a budget number for a tender or a live shipment | Say which it is and when the decision is expected. | The right kind of answer: an indication with its assumptions listed, or a firm dated offer |
| No payment structure | Whether to build the offer around a credit, a collection, or an advance and balance | State what your bank will actually issue, and in which currency. | An offer that survives the credit application instead of being re-cut when the bank sees it |
| No identifiable buyer | Whether there is a project behind the enquiry at all | Send from a company address with the company name, country and end use stated. | Priority. Identical one-line enquiries are triaged last by parties close to the cargo and first by intermediaries |
| Request for an FCO, ICPO, LOI or proof of funds | Nothing useful — this sequence signals a broker chain rather than a buyer | Ask for a firm dated offer, and send a purchase order or a draft contract instead. | A conversation with a party that can actually perform, rather than a chain of forwarded messages |
| A specification the named grade cannot meet | Whether limits have been copied across from a different standard | Send the specification you were given and ask which lines are achievable before pricing. | An honest answer on what cannot be met, while it is still a conversation rather than a rejected cargo |
| No currency named | Which currency to price in, which currency your credit will be issued in, and who carries the movement between the two | State the currency your bank will issue in, and say whether you want the price firm for the validity or linked to a published quotation. | A number that goes straight into a credit application without a re-quote, and an explicit answer on who carries the currency movement |
| A cutback or an emulsion asked for by family name only | Which curing class or setting class is wanted, and therefore the transport classification, the packing and the document set | Name the grade with its standard: medium curing to ASTM D2027, rapid curing to ASTM D2028, or the emulsion class to ASTM D977, ASTM D2397 or EN 13808. | A quotable product instead of a product family, and a straight answer on whether the cargo is a Class 3 dangerous good under UN 1999 and what that does to freight and to the document set |
| A tender enquiry with no closing date and no bid validity | How long the price has to stand, and whether a bid bond or performance guarantee will be required | Give the closing date, the bid validity the tender demands, and whether a guarantee is called for and under which rules. | A price structured to survive the validity — normally a firm product price for a short window with a named adjustment mechanism beyond it, and freight quoted separately so the two do not expire on the same day |
Enquiries that contain the following are priced immediately. Enquiries that do not cost a day of back-and-forth for both sides.
Three clauses cover it: grade with its standard, tonnage with its packing, destination with its Incoterm. For example: VG-30 to IS 73:2013, 1,000 MT in 180 kg new steel drums, CFR Nhava Sheva, Incoterms 2020, offer to be firm for seven days, batch Certificate of Analysis with test methods, third-party inspection at load quoted separately. That is one sentence, it contains no ambiguity, and it can be answered without a single follow-up question. The builder at the top of this page assembles the same thing from fields.
Request that the offer states what it assumed: container count and net tonnage per container, drum or bag count, whether the price is on net or gross weight, what is inside the price and what is outside it, and the date and time the validity ends. An offer that lists its assumptions can be audited in five minutes. An offer that is a single number has to be interrogated over several days, and the interrogation is where an unwilling seller starts to move.
Comparison only works if both parties were asked the same thing. Send the identical grade and standard, the identical packing description, the identical Incoterm and named place, and the same request for validity, documentation and inspection. Any divergence in what comes back is then information about the supplier rather than noise created by your own question. This costs nothing and it is the cheapest quality signal available before a contract exists.
If you have bought this grade before, say what the last cargo was: the packing, the port, the Incoterm and roughly when. It changes the conversation from a cold enquiry into a specific one, it tells the seller which questions are already settled, and it makes an unrealistic offer harder to send you.
Two lines that cost nothing and remove a whole round of re-quoting. Name the currency your credit or transfer will be issued in, so the price arrives in the currency you will actually pay in rather than converted by somebody at a rate nobody wrote down. Then name the issuing bank. Whether a seller will want the credit confirmed — and therefore whether a confirmation charge lands somewhere in the price — is a function of that bank and its country rather than of the cargo, so a seller who knows the bank can quote the structure once instead of twice.
Public and utility tenders routinely require a bid to stay open far longer than any freight quotation can be held, and frequently require a bid guarantee at submission and a performance guarantee on award. Send the closing date, the bid validity required, whether a guarantee is called for and under which rules — demand guarantees run under ICC URDG 758 and standby credits under ISP98 — and whether the award is on lowest price or on a scored evaluation. An offer written against that information can be built to survive it: normally a product price firm for a short window with a named adjustment mechanism beyond it, and freight quoted separately so the two do not expire on the same day. An offer written without it is a firm number that somebody is going to have to withdraw.
At minimum the grade and the quantity. To get a firm price rather than an indication, add the packing, the destination port and the Incoterm you want quoted. The RFQ builder at the top of this page assembles all of it for you.
It depends on the packing and the route. Drummed and bagged cargo moves in container loads, so a single 20-foot container of roughly 12 to 20 MT is the practical floor. Those two figures are the ends of the range rather than an approximation: 80 steel drums of 150 kg net is 12 MT, and 20 jumbo bags of 1 MT is 20 MT, with 180 kg and 185 kg drums giving 14.4 MT and 14.8 MT respectively at the same 80 drums per container. Bulk shipment requires a vessel parcel and starts far higher. Send your quantity and the realistic options will be set out.
Usually because they are not quoting the same thing. Check the Incoterm, the packing, whether drums are new or reconditioned, whether the net weight excludes tare, and whether inspection is included. Once those are aligned, most of the apparent price gap disappears — and any that remains is worth asking about. The normalisation worksheet further up this page sets the adjustments out in order, with the container-count and drum-count arithmetic worked through on a 1,000 MT enquiry.
If you have a freight forwarder and want control, ask for FOB for bulk or FCA for containers. If you want a single landed number, ask for CFR or CIF for bulk, or CPT or CIP for containers. Ask for two of them on the same enquiry and you can see exactly what the freight component costs. The rule underneath the rules is simpler than the table: assign each leg of the journey to whichever party is better placed to arrange it. If you hold a contract rate on that lane or an open marine cargo policy, buy the sea leg and the insurance yourself; if you do not, buy them from the seller and check the price against your own forwarder.
Samples of bitumen can be arranged, but they are of limited value on their own — a small sample tells you about the sample, not about the cargo that will load weeks later. Independent sampling and testing at load port, with sealed retained samples, is what actually protects a shipment. If you do want one, make it a sample worth having: ask for it to be drawn from a production batch you can identify by batch number, sent with the Certificate of Analysis for that same batch, and drawn under a named practice — ASTM D140, AASHTO T 40 or EN 58 — rather than decanted from whatever drum was nearest. Be clear about what it cannot do. It cannot tell you what a later batch will measure, and it cannot settle a dispute, because a sample that has been in your possession is a sample the seller can say was not the one it sent. The version that does settle a dispute is drawn at the load point by an inspector you appointed, split, sealed and held by both sides, which is what turns a later argument into a laboratory question resolvable under ASTM D3244.
By the documents and the payment structure, not by assurances. Fix the grade and governing standard in the contract, require a batch Certificate of Analysis, appoint an independent inspector at load port, and structure payment so it follows performance. That combination is what makes a quality commitment enforceable. Then use it in time. Where the CISG governs, Article 38 requires the buyer to examine the goods within as short a period as is practicable and Article 39(1) requires notice specifying the nature of a lack of conformity within a reasonable time after it was or ought to have been discovered, with a two-year long-stop from handing over under Article 39(2) unless a contractual guarantee period says otherwise — so a prompt discharge test and a sealed retained sample are what keep the commitment alive, not only what makes it provable.
Yes. Alongside the bitumen range there are related petroleum products including base oil, fuel oil, CST-180, EN590 diesel, LPG, sulfur and urea. Include the product in your enquiry and it will be addressed on the same basis.
An indication is a price with no commitment and usually no validity: useful for budgeting, useless in a tender. A firm offer is capable of acceptance on its stated terms within its stated validity and becomes a contract when you accept it, which is why a serious seller dates it and limits it. A proforma invoice is not an invoice at all — it is a statement of goods, price and terms used to open a documentary credit, support an import permit application or release funds, and it binds nobody unless it is countersigned as a contract. Treat the soft-offer sequence that circulates in broker chains — FCO, ICPO, LOI, BCL, proof of funds — with caution: none of those documents is defined by any trade rule or banking practice, a genuine seller has no use for a bank comfort letter before a contract exists, and an early request for proof of funds is a request for information you have no reason to give out. One further point settles more validity arguments than any other. Acceptance has to be unqualified: where the CISG governs, Article 19(1) makes a reply that purports to accept but adds to, limits or otherwise modifies the offer a rejection and a counter-offer, and Article 19(3) treats terms relating to price, payment, quality and quantity, place and time of delivery, liability and dispute settlement as material. Working the other way, Article 16(2) provides that an offer indicating it is irrevocable, whether by stating a fixed time for acceptance or otherwise, cannot be revoked. So a dated firm offer is worth something real, and a reply of "agreed, but on 90 days" has thrown it away.
Short, and for a stated reason. The binder price moves with crude and refinery economics, and where the offer is CFR, CIF, CPT or CIP the freight behind it was quoted to the seller with its own and usually shorter validity. A firm offer should therefore carry a date and a time, and should say whether the validity covers the product price only or the landed price as well. Two further points are worth asking for in writing: what happens if your documentary credit is opened after the validity expires, and whether the shipment window runs from the offer date or from receipt of a workable credit. Most schedule disputes in this trade begin with a validity that lapsed quietly while a bank was processing an application.
WhatsApp on +971 56 144 5733. That is the only enquiry channel, which keeps the discussion in one traceable thread rather than spread across systems. The RFQ builder above opens WhatsApp with your enquiry already written.
Four pages worth reading first — one on how offers are structured, one on how buyers are defrauded, one on the document that carries the quality commitment, and one on the delivery terms that decide where a price stops.
Skip the builder and open WhatsApp directly. Include the grade, quantity, packing, destination port and Incoterm and the enquiry can be priced from the first message.