Suppliers quote shelf life from harvest. Buyers need it from the moment the pallet lands on their dock. Those are two different numbers, and the gap between them is the transit, which on an Egyptian part-load into Europe is commonly two to three weeks door to door once groupage consolidation and inland delivery are counted. Plan against the wrong number and a product that looked comfortable on paper arrives with days rather than weeks of selling time.
The arithmetic
Remaining selling days equals total shelf life at the correct set point, minus days from harvest to loading, minus days at sea, minus days in port and customs, minus inland transit. On a part-load add the consolidation days, because your pallets wait for the rest of the container to fill. That waiting period is invisible in the quotation and it is real.
A useful discipline is to ask the supplier for the harvest week, not the loading week. The difference between the two on a well-run packhouse is two to four days. On a poorly run one it can be a fortnight, and you will not find out until the fruit ages faster than it should.
Roughly what each product gives you
These are working figures for well-cooled, correctly graded fruit shipped at the right set point, on a typical Egypt to Northern Europe part-load. Treat them as planning numbers rather than guarantees.
Onion and garlic, cured and out of store, give months rather than weeks. They are the most forgiving thing you can put on a part-load and the natural filler for a mixed load.
Sweet potato, cured and held above 12 C, gives six to eight weeks after arrival. Pomegranate gives four to six weeks in the peak of the season and less from the storage tail. Citrus gives three to five weeks depending on variety and whether the rind has been stressed in transit, with Valencia carrying longer than Navel.
Greenhouse vegetables such as bell pepper and cucumber give one to two weeks. Table grapes give two to three weeks. Fresh strawberry gives days rather than weeks, which is why it moves by air or on a dedicated fast routing rather than as ordinary groupage.
What quietly shortens the figure
Four things account for most of the loss. A delay between harvest and pre-cooling, because the clock runs at field temperature until the pulp comes down. A set point that was correct for the majority product in the container but wrong for yours, which is the usual cost of sharing a box. A container rolled at the origin port, which adds days at the worst end of the chain. And a break in the chain at destination, where the pallet stands on an ambient dock for three hours while paperwork is sorted.
The first 24 hours at your own warehouse decide how much of the remaining life you keep, and the checks that protect it are set out in the note on checking an Egyptian part-load on arrival.
Buying to the number
Once you know the remaining days, the order size follows from it rather than from the price break. Buying two pallets of a three-week product when you sell one pallet a fortnight is buying shrink. It is usually better to order smaller and more often on the short-life items, and to take the volume discount on the storage crops where the clock is generous.
If you are holding several products at one set point in your own cold room, the rotation matters as much as the temperature, and the compromise involved is covered in the guide to holding an Egyptian part-load in your own cold room.
Ask for the harvest week with the quote
Send us the products, the volume and your delivery week, and we will quote with the expected harvest week, the routing and the transit days, so you can work out the selling window before you commit. Same-day quotes on most requests. WhatsApp +20 10 9911 1918.