How much sugar to order first: lot sizes, shipments and contracts.

Per shipment, or in total?

Many of the quantities I receive can be read two ways. “50,000 tonnes” could be one cargo, a year of monthly cargoes, or a number someone typed to look serious. The supplier can’t answer until it knows which.

If you ask for 50,000 tonnes in one shipment, I won’t quietly cut it into smaller cargoes. I’ll tell you the lot sizes the supplier loads and you decide how to split it.

Vessel lots: 12,500 or 25,000 tonnes

Most of Brazil’s sugar leaves in bulk, on Handymax vessels carrying 20,000 to 40,000 tonnes and Supramax bulk carriers carrying up to 60,000 tonnes. Bagged sugar is a small share, and Proinde, a Brazilian port services firm, puts bagged shipments from the smaller ports at 13,000 to 18,000 tonnes per vessel. The lots I quote by vessel are 12,500 or 25,000 tonnes per shipment, in 50 kg bags, and the mill I represent can load up to 60,000 tonnes a month in total. When a company with no import history asks for hundreds of thousands of tonnes as a first order, in my experience it usually isn’t a real order; see whether a million-tonne offer is real.

Containers: from about 50 tonnes

That is where I start: two 20ft containers. Proinde’s loading figure is 540 bags of 50 kg per container, 27 tonnes, so two hold up to about 54 tonnes, depending on the bags and the box. Container sugar works differently from vessel sugar. In my quotes, freight is a much bigger share of each tonne by container, so a container price and a vessel price can’t be compared, and I price containers per shipping lane. Details are in buying Brazilian sugar by the container.

One cargo or a contract

A single cargo and a run of shipments over a year are priced differently, and with the supplier I represent the single cargo costs more per tonne. Tell me which you want before I ask for a number, so the first figure you see is the one that applies to you. If you aren’t sure yet, say so. Starting with one cargo and moving to a contract later is fine with me.

What the contract says about quantity

If your contract follows the rules of the Refined Sugar Association in London, three of them matter for a first order.

• If the word “about” sits next to the contract quantity, delivery can be 2% more or less. Without it, every bag must hold at least the stated weight, and the total can’t fall below the contract minimum.
• A contract delivered in instalments isn’t cancelled because one instalment is late or fails, and each instalment counts as a separate contract. If the buyer doesn’t pay for an instalment, the seller can withhold further deliveries.
• Shipment periods have fixed meanings. The first half of a month is the 1st to the 15th and the second half the 16th to the end; beginning, middle and end are the 1st to the 10th, the 11th to the 20th, and the 21st onwards.

What to send

• the grade: ICUMSA 45, ICUMSA 150 or VHP;
• the quantity per shipment, and how many shipments over what period;
• vessel or containers, and the discharge port;
• a single cargo or a contract;
• the packing you need, if you know it.

That is enough for a real answer. Everything else, including the bank and the inspector, comes later; how to import sugar from Brazil walks through the order.