Your export offer is the product, volume, quality, lead time, price and sales terms that you can sustain over time. It becomes competitive when it meets what the destination requires and solves better what the buyer values.
Goal: Build an export offer sheet with volume, minimum lot, lead time and price, and calculate your delivery time with your real export capacity.
Your export offer is not just your product. It is what you can deliver to a buyer abroad, on a sustained basis, with the volume, quality, lead time and price that you promise. It is competitive when, compared with the buyer's other suppliers, it solves better what the buyer values: price, quality, regularity, origin or service. An offer you cannot fulfill stops being an offer and becomes a risk to your reputation.
Define it in six components. Product: technical specifications and shelf life. Presentation: container, packaging, label and palletizing (the way of grouping cases on a pallet). Volume: how much you can deliver per month or per season, with minimum and maximum lot. Quality: technical sheet, tests and certifications. Price and terms: Incoterm, payment method, delivery time and validity of the offer. Service: samples, quick response, language and after-sales support.
Tell what is mandatory from what is valued. What is mandatory is what the destination requires by law or for health reasons: limits on contaminants, labeling in the consumer's language, treated wooden packaging. Without that, your product does not get in. What is valued is what the customer pays better for, such as an identified origin or a voluntary certification. Meet the mandatory first and then invest where the return is clear. Certifications are covered in depth in the course on Quality, Technical Requirements and Agro-exports.
The first document a buyer will ask you for is your export offer sheet: one or two pages with the description, the subheading, the specifications, the presentation, the monthly volume, the minimum lot, the lead times, the certifications, a reference price with its Incoterm and the payment method. It must be in the customer's language and use the units that the customer uses. After the sheet come the samples, and they must be identical to the product you will really sell.
Calculate your promises; do not guess them. The production time comes from dividing the quantity ordered by your exportable capacity (the one you calculated in topic 2-1), and to that you add paperwork and transit. You validate the price with your cost sheet, which is built in module 4. Lowering the price without calculating the full cost does not make you competitive: it only makes you lose money, and uneven quality at a low price drives serious buyers away.
| Component | What you define | Andes Gourmet example |
|---|---|---|
| Product | Specifications and shelf life | Aguaymanto jam, 320 g glass jar, 18-month shelf life (assumption) |
| Presentation | Container, packaging, label and pallet | Case of 12 jars and a pallet of 80 cases; label adapted to the destination |
| Volume | Quantity per month, minimum and maximum lot | Regular order of 4,800 jars a month; minimum lot of 1 pallet |
| Quality | Technical sheet, tests and certifications | Health registration, recent laboratory tests and HACCP plan |
| Price and terms | Incoterm, payment, lead time and validity | FOB reference range, 30% advance, delivery in 45 days, offer valid for 30 days |
| Service | Samples, language and response | Sample of 1 case, sheet in Spanish and English, response within 24 hours |
Result: The sheet offers 4,800 jars a month, a minimum lot of 1 pallet and delivery in 45 days, figures that come from the real exportable capacity. The range of US$ 26 to US$ 30 per case FOB remains a hypothesis to validate with the cost sheet.
01/01/2019
According to the European Commission, maximum cadmium limits for chocolate and cocoa powder sold to consumers have applied in the European Union since 01/01/2019. There are three levels for chocolate, depending on its cocoa content, and one for cocoa powder; the darker the chocolate, the higher the limit allowed. Cadmium is a heavy metal present in some soils. Anyone exporting cocoa or chocolate to Europe must know the cadmium level of their product before offering it.
The market's requirement is part of your product: measure your batches against the destination's limit before sending samples.
2018
International Standard for Phytosanitary Measures No. 15 (ISPM 15), of the International Plant Protection Convention, regulates wood packaging material in international trade. In its 2018 version with annexes, it requires debarked and treated wood, with heat treatment (at least 56 °C for 30 continuous minutes throughout the profile of the wood) or fumigation, and a mark with the country code, the producer code and the treatment code. A pallet without that mark exposes your cargo to phytosanitary measures at the destination.
Ask your supplier of wooden pallets and cases for the ISPM 15 treatment and mark before you build your first shipment.
Source: CIPF (FAO) – NIMF 15: Regulation of wood packaging material in international trade (versión 2018)
13/12/2014
Regulation (EU) 1169/2011 on food information to consumers has applied since 13/12/2014, and the nutrition declaration has been mandatory since 13/12/2016, according to the European Commission. The information must be given in a language that consumers in the country where the product is sold understand easily. A label designed only for the Peruvian market must be reviewed before exporting to the EU.
Design the label with the importer in the chosen market: language and nutritional data are defined before printing, not after.
Source: Comisión Europea – Food information to consumers: legislation
Practise with the calculators, the COMEX Simulator and the review questions on the main page.
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