Cube, loaf or granulated: the form your market actually buys
The same sugar leaves a works in three shapes, and the shape decides the packing, the handling and half the price conversation.
a / note
Insight — technical note
How to read a certificate of analysis before you read the price
An analysis is a short document that most buyers skim and few read properly. It is also the only part of an offer that can be checked against the goods when they arrive, which makes it the cheapest due diligence available to an importer.
- documents
- quality control
- for purchasing managers
b / reading
What the document is for, and what it is not
A certificate of analysis describes one consignment. That is the whole point of it, and it is the first thing to check: if the document in front of you describes a product in general rather than a lot that was produced, it is a brochure with a laboratory's vocabulary. A certificate that names the lot, the order it belongs to and the date it was tested is a document you can hold a supplier to. One that names none of those is a document you cannot use.
The second thing to check is who issued it. An analysis produced by the works that made the goods carries a different weight from one assembled by a trading company that bought them. Neither is automatically better, but they answer different questions — the first tells you what the line produced, the second tells you what somebody was told. Know which you are reading.
Read the third column first
Most specification tables have three columns: the parameter, the unit, and the basis on which the figure is reported. Buyers read the first two and argue about the numbers. The third column is where the meaning of the number lives. The same parameter, measured at a different point in the line or reported against a different reference, can produce two figures that are both honest and not comparable with one another.
parameter · unit · basis of reporting — the column on the right is the one worth reading twice
Three questions that separate suppliers
Where in the line was this measured? Moisture taken before drying and moisture taken after packing are different facts about the same goods. A supplier who knows the answer runs the line; a supplier who does not is passing on somebody else's sheet.
What happens if a lot misses the agreed figure? The useful answer is that you are told, with the measurement attached, before the goods move. A supplier whose analyses always report good results is not reporting.
Can I have the analysis at the same time as the quotation? Price and analysis read together tell you in one afternoon what a month of correspondence will otherwise tell you slowly. If the analysis only appears after the order, you are being asked to commit before you can compare.
Why we publish the table empty
On every product page of this site, the specification table carries the parameter, the unit and the basis of reporting — and no figures. That is deliberate. The figures that belong in your file are the figures our quality control laboratories measured on the lot produced for your order, and they are issued with the goods. A number printed on a website describes nothing that was ever loaded into a container.
See the table this note describes Where the figures are measured
c / next
Read next
The other two notes published in this phase, both written for the same reader.
What changes when you buy from the producer instead of a trader
Not the price, usually. What changes is who answers a technical question and whose name is on the certificate when your customs broker asks.
d / desk
Talk to the export desk
If this note raised a question about your own supplier, ask us the same question about ourselves. Request the analysis together with the price and read them side by side.