Peivana quotes most part-loads on the day the enquiry arrives. When we cannot, it is almost never because the product is unavailable. It is because the enquiry does not contain enough information to price, and the reply has to be a list of questions instead of a number. That exchange costs two or three days, and in a week where freight space is tightening it can cost the sailing.
Here is what a quotation needs, and why each line changes the figure.
1. Product, and how specific you can be
Name the product and, where it matters, the variety or type. Pomegranate is a category. Wonderful at 85 to 95 mm is an order. If you do not know the variety yet, say what the fruit is for, because a processing buyer and a retail buyer get different offers from the same field.
2. Quantity, in pallets or cartons
Give the quantity in the unit you think in and let us convert it. Half a pallet, three pallets, two hundred cartons, one tonne: all workable. What cannot be priced is “a small quantity”. Quantity sets which pallet positions you occupy and therefore your share of the freight, which is usually the largest single variable in a part-load price. Our note on minimum order quantities from Egypt gives the floor for each product line.
3. Pack format, if you have a preference
Carton weight, punnet or loose, net or mesh bag, printed or plain. If you have no preference, say so and take the standard export format, which is normally the cheapest and the fastest to get on a pallet. If you need your own label or a specific retail pack, say it at enquiry stage rather than after the price is agreed, because it changes both the cost and the lead time.
4. Incoterm and destination
FOB Alexandria and DAP your warehouse in Lyon are different numbers for the same fruit, and the gap between them is not a margin, it is freight, handling and formalities. Name the Incoterm you want the price on, or name your destination city and let us quote both so you can compare. If you are unsure which suits you, our comparison of how to normalise two Egyptian quotations explains why the Incoterm has to be fixed before any two prices can be read against each other.
5. Delivery week
A week, not a date. Sailing schedules are weekly on most lanes, and asking for a specific Tuesday usually means paying for a worse routing to hit it. Tell us the week you need the stock in your warehouse and we will count backwards from it.
6. Certification you require
GLOBALG.A.P., BRC, organic, a specific residue report, a particular inspection body. These are not add-ons that can be attached later. They determine which packhouse the order can be placed with, which is why an enquiry that mentions certification on day one gets a better price than one where it appears after the fact.
7. Whether the load is mixed
If you want several products in one shipment, list them together at the outset. Compatibility on temperature and ethylene decides what can share a container, and it is cheaper to find the conflict at quotation stage than after confirmation. The rules are in mixing products in one Egyptian reefer.
8. Payment terms you are working to
Deposit and balance against documents, full advance, or something else. The terms sit inside the price on export business rather than beside it, so a quotation given without them is provisional whether or not it says so.
A workable RFQ in five lines
“Wonderful pomegranate, 2 pallets, standard 4 kg export carton, CFR Valencia, week 42, GLOBALG.A.P. required, deposit and balance against documents.” That is enough to price, and it will come back the same day with the pack detail, the pallet configuration, the routing and the terms attached.
Send yours to the Peivana desk on WhatsApp at +20 10 9911 1918 and you will have a number back the same working day.