Most buyers start with Egypt on a spot basis. An enquiry goes out, a price comes back, a pallet or two is booked, and the exercise repeats when stock runs down. It works, and for a first season it is the right way to learn. The moment volume becomes predictable, spot buying starts costing money in ways that do not appear on the invoice.
What a programme is
A weekly programme is a written agreement covering a defined period, normally a season or a quarter, in which the buyer commits to a volume per week and the supplier commits to supply it at an agreed price basis. The product, grade, count, pack format and Incoterm are fixed at the start. Volume is expressed as a number of pallets per week with a tolerance, commonly plus or minus 10 to 20 per cent, and a rolling forecast running four to six weeks ahead.
Price is handled one of two ways. Either a fixed price for the whole period, which suits storage crops such as onion, garlic and sweet potato where the cost base is stable, or a fixed formula reviewed monthly, which is more realistic on fresh fruit where harvest conditions move the raw material cost week to week. A programme that pretends fresh citrus will hold one price from November to April will simply be renegotiated under pressure in January.
What the commitment buys
Four things, in order of how much they matter.
Allocation comes first. In a short week, a supplier fills programme orders before spot enquiries. This is not favouritism, it is how a packhouse protects the volume it has already planned labour and freight around. Our note on what a supplier needs to quote a part-load explains how much of the planning happens before a price is even issued.
Consistency follows. The same blocks, the same grader and the same packing instruction across weeks produce fruit that behaves the same in your own cold room. Spot orders pull from whatever is on the line that day.
Price improves, though less than buyers expect on small volumes. A committed half pallet per week is still a half pallet. The saving comes mostly from freight, because a supplier building a consolidated container around known weekly volume fills it more efficiently, and from lower handling cost per order.
Planning is the fourth. You know your landed cost and your arrival dates far enough ahead to sell forward to your own customers with confidence.
Where the risk sits
The risk is that your own demand moves and you are holding a commitment. That is why the tolerance band and the forecast matter more than the headline volume. Agree in writing what happens when you need to reduce: how many weeks of notice, whether unshipped volume rolls forward or lapses, and whether the price basis changes if annual volume falls below the assumption it was built on.
Agree the quality consequence too. A programme is not a reason to accept lower grade in a difficult week. Keep the specification clause exactly as you would on a spot order, and keep the right to reject.
When to start one
The sensible trigger is three completed orders of the same product from the same supplier with no unresolved dispute. By then you know the grade, the transit and the paperwork. Our guide to your second Egyptian order covers what to change before you get there.
Peivana runs weekly and fortnightly programmes on citrus, onion, garlic, sweet potato, herbs and the winter vegetable lines, in part-load quantities from a single pallet. To discuss a programme for the coming season, message us on WhatsApp at +20 10 9911 1918.