Japanese and Korean buyers raise residues earlier than they used to, often in the first email rather than when the contract is drafted. That changes how a lot is prepared.
What Japanese and Korean buyers ask
Three questions recur: the residue report for the most recent lot, the list of active substances tested, and which laboratory did the work. The third is new compared with a few years ago, and hard to answer on an in-house factory report alone.
For spices and nuts they usually attach the importer's own list of active substances, tighter than the general market limits. That list has to be read before quoting, because some substances on it a typical growing area cannot meet.
The easiest place to fail is a substance with no limit of its own. Many markets apply a very low default limit to these, well below the limits set for regulated substances. The exact figures vary by market and over time · [to be confirmed]. In practice a lot can pass every familiar parameter and still fail on a substance nobody thought about.
An Supply's two layers of testing
The partner factory tests internally, lot by lot. An Supply re-tests, or sends the sample to an independent laboratory, before shipment. That second layer is where an out-of-limit lot is caught while it can still be fixed, meaning swapped or reblended.
How the sample is drawn matters as much as the result. It has to be pulled from several points in the lot and combined, not taken from one convenient bag. With nuts, a few contaminated kernels in several tonnes are enough to push a result over the limit, so an unrepresentative sample makes a passing report meaningless.
Re-testing a lot costs a fraction of what a rejected container costs.
Cost and turnaround
A wide multi-residue screen takes real time and money, and that time sits inside the delivery schedule. Buyers who ask for their own substance list should allow for it when setting the shipment date.
- The wider the substance list, the longer the results take.
- An independent laboratory carries more weight with buyers, but needs booking ahead.
- Testing costs are usually shared as agreed in the contract · [to be supplied]
How to lower the risk of rejection
Two things help most: send An Supply the buyer's substance list at the start, and accept testing before stuffing rather than after the goods are loaded. The second looks slower but avoids the situation where the only option left is shipping the goods back.
A third belongs in the contract itself: state who pays for re-testing and what happens when the two sides get different results. Usually that means naming a third laboratory as arbiter and writing down who pays in each case. The clause is short, and it is what keeps both sides from arguing for weeks while the container sits at the destination port.
This article is for reference. Residue limits change market by market over time and need confirming before each lot.