Delta Valencia oranges: what to specify when ordering a 40 ft reefer

A reefer booking is a list of decisions, not a single line on a purchase order. Variety, grade, carton count, fruit size, temperature regime and discharge port all have to be named.

"One 40 ft reefer of oranges" is not an order. It is the beginning of one, and the six decisions it leaves unsaid are exactly the six that a quotation has to be built on. This is what to put in the enquiry so the reply is a price rather than a questionnaire.

Start with the variety, because oranges are not one commodity. Delta Valencia is a Valencia-type sweet orange grown in Tanzania, and we supply it in single-variety lots — not as a mixed consignment topped up with whatever else is in season. If your market buys on variety name, say so, and the contract will say so too.

Grade is the next line. Fruit is offered in export grade: sound, clean fruit sorted to that grade. What we deliberately do not publish is the carton count and the fruit size, because there is no single right answer to either — both are agreed per order and confirmed at quotation. A buyer who knows the count their market sells at should send it; a buyer who does not should say what the fruit is for, and the count discussion usually resolves itself.

The carton format is what turns a decision into a load. Fruit ships in export cartons, and how many cartons fill a 20 ft or a 40 ft reefer depends on the carton dimensions and how it is palletised. That is why our minimum is expressed as a container rather than a tonnage: the exact volume follows from the carton, and is confirmed at quotation once the format is settled.

Temperature regime is a technical decision, not a catalogue figure, and it is agreed per shipment rather than quoted from a web page. If your destination requires in-transit cold treatment, a specific set-point or a particular ventilation setting, that has to be on the table before the container is booked — it changes the booking, the transit plan and the documentation, and it cannot be retro-fitted to a reefer that has already sailed.

Then the commercial frame. Consignments move by sea from the Port of Dar es Salaam, and we quote EXW, FCA, FOB, CFR or CIF as available for the shipment. Name the discharge port with the term — "CIF Jebel Ali" is a quotable instruction, "CIF Gulf" is not — because the freight leg is where a landed price is won or lost.

Finally, timing. Supply is seasonal and every offer is based on confirmed availability at the time of enquiry, so a reefer programme is planned against the season rather than against a calendar we would like to have. Send the variety, grade, count and size preference, carton format, temperature requirement, quantity, discharge port and Incoterm, and we will confirm what is available before quoting.