Insights
Insights
Working notes on specification, testing, grading and importing — written for the people who actually have to buy this material, not for search engines. No gated PDFs and no contact form in the way.
How to read a Certificate of Analysis
A COA is the only thing standing between a specification and a hope. Most buyers glance at the assay figure and file it. Here is what the rest of the document is telling you.
Aflatoxin and UK nut imports
The most expensive words in this trade are "we will test it when it lands". Here is how aflatoxin risk actually works, and what a buyer should insist on before a container leaves origin.
Ashwagandha: a buyer's guide to specifications
Ashwagandha is the most heavily traded adaptogen in the world, and the gap between the best and worst material on the market is enormous. Four questions separate them.
How to spot fake saffron
At several thousand pounds a kilogram, the incentive to adulterate saffron is enormous, and the trade has spent centuries getting good at it. Here is what the laboratory measures, and what you can check yourself.
Importing dry fruit from India to the UK
The FOB price at origin is not the price. Here is what sits between a quotation in Mumbai and a pallet on your floor in Glasgow, and where the surprises usually appear.
Why we publish this
Most of what goes wrong in this trade goes wrong because a buyer did not know which question to ask. We would rather you asked it — of us or of anyone else.
What we will not do
Write a claim a specification cannot support, quote a number we cannot repeat, or tell you a lead time we know is optimistic.
Something you want covered
Tell us. If a question comes up often enough that it is costing buyers money, it is worth writing down properly.
What we cover
Four subjects, written for buyers.
Specification
What a marker percentage actually means, why the assay method changes the number, and how to write a specification a supplier cannot wriggle out of. Most disputes in this trade start with a specification that was never precise enough to hold anyone to.
Testing & documentation
How to read a Certificate of Analysis, which fields matter, and the warning signs of a document worth questioning. Plus what testing should happen at origin rather than after the goods land.
Grading & adulteration
ISO 3632 for saffron, count and colour grades for nuts, diameter for figs — and the specific ways each of these products gets faked, bulked or mis-sold, with the tests that catch it.
Importing
Incoterms, documentation, import controls, duty and realistic lead times for bringing food ingredients from India into Great Britain — including where the landed cost actually comes from.
Next step
Ask us something specific.
A specification you want matched, a certificate you want a second opinion on, or a line you are thinking about adding.