A buyer who lands an Egyptian part-load at a good number and still finishes the month flat usually has not lost money on freight. The margin left somewhere between the warehouse door and the invoice, in shrink, grade-out and terms. This is how to build a sell price that holds.
Start from a per-carton landed cost, not a per-kilo idea
The only number worth pricing from is the fully landed cost of one carton at your own door. That means the goods, the freight share allocated to your pallets, terminal and handling charges, customs clearance and duty, inland delivery, and any inspection you paid for. If you are working from the supplier’s FOB figure plus a rough freight guess, you are pricing from a number that is out by more than your margin. Our step by step method for building it is in the guide to landed cost on an Egyptian part-load.
Apply shrink before you apply margin
This is the step most commonly skipped. Not every carton that arrives is a carton you sell at full price. Three deductions apply.
- Transit and moisture loss, which is real weight gone from the box. On citrus and pomegranate this is modest over a normal transit. On leafy and soft product it is not.
- Grade-out on arrival inspection, the cartons downgraded or discarded. On a well-specified programme this can be low single digits. On a first order from an unproven supplier, budget more.
- Ageing stock, the cartons that sit past their commercial window and clear at a discount or not at all.
Take a sensible combined figure, divide the landed cost of the whole consignment by the number of cartons you expect to sell at full price, and price from that. A five percent total loss on a load bought at a ten percent gross margin removes half the margin, which is why the ordering of these two steps matters more than the precision of either.
Terms are part of the price
Paying a deposit before loading and the balance against documents means your money is out for the whole transit and then some, while your own customers may take thirty days from delivery. On a six to eight week cycle that is real financing cost, and on a growing account it is the constraint that stops the next order. Size the gap deliberately rather than discovering it, using the approach in our note on cash flow on a small Egyptian order.
Price the specification, not the commodity
The most durable margin on Egyptian origin comes from selling a defined product rather than a category. A carton described by variety, count, size band, class and pack format can be sold on those terms and repeated next month. A carton described as “oranges from Egypt” is priced against whatever the cheapest offer in your customer’s inbox says that week. This is also why a part-load with six well-specified lines usually outperforms a full container of one line for a mid-size distributor, because each line can be placed with the customer who values it.
A working check
Before you confirm an order, write down the landed cost per carton, the number of saleable cartons you expect, the price you believe you can achieve, and the week you expect to be paid. If the margin only works when every carton sells at the top price in the first week, it is not a margin, it is a hope.
We quote by the half pallet with the specification written out line by line, usually within the same working day. Send your target products and delivery week on WhatsApp at +20 10 9911 1918.