Buyer guides

Buyer-side notes on sourcing from China: how specification is written, which documents travel with a shipment, how cylinders and IBCs are packed and weighed, what the booking calendar looks like, and which rules apply. Each guide answers one purchasing question.

• Consolidating Several Refrigerant Grades Into One Container for East Africa: What the Documents Require

  Why a mixed-grade container to Kenya, Tanzania or Uganda is a documentation problem before it is a freight problem — the segregation rules between UN numbers, the pre-shipment conformity check each country runs, and the paper set that has to agree line by line.

• Electronic Specialty Gases in the Group's Range: the CAS List and How They Are Specified

  A specialty gas is bought by substance and grade, not by brand: the CAS number fixes the substance, the specification sheet fixes the impurity limits, and a certified cylinder gets it to the line.

• Requesting a Quotation for Refrigerants or Chloromethanes from China: What to Put in the Enquiry

  An enquiry that comes back comparable, in writing, and on one page: the eight items to state — product and grade, quantity basis, packing, destination, Incoterm, importer role, documents and timing — and what each one changes in the offer.

• Which Chinese Licence Governs Which Activity: Trading, Storing, Filling and Transporting Chemicals

  A buyer's map of the Chinese regime for hazardous chemicals: which permit covers selling, which covers holding stock, which covers filling cylinders, and which covers the truck — and why one licence never covers all four.

• Importing R410A and R134a into the EU: The F-gas Licence, Quota and Packing Checks a Buyer Should Make

  Since 11 March 2024 an EU licence has been required to import HFCs including R410A and R134a, and quota moves only through the F-gas Portal. Four checks that separate a compliant supplier from a shipment stuck at the border.

• "Prompt Shipment" and What It Actually Means: Lead Times, Cut-offs and the Two Dates That Decide Delivery

  How to read a Chinese supplier's delivery commitment: the difference between production lead time and booking cut-off, why dangerous goods close earlier than general cargo, and which two dates should appear in the order.

• Sourcing Chemicals from China: Six Checks Before the First Order

  Six things a buyer can verify before the first order — business scope versus the dangerous-goods licence, no-storage trading, cylinder test dates, document consistency, carrier packs and payment terms — each with the question to ask.

• Supplying R410A and R134a into the EU: What the Supplier Does, and What Stays With the Buyer

  We can supply R410A and R134a into the European Union where the buyer holds the F-gas import quota and the REACH registration. The exact split of responsibilities, the documents that travel with the goods, and the point at which the shipment becomes an import.

• Vetting a Chinese Chemical Group Before a First Order: Which Document Answers Which Question

  A buyer's due-diligence map for a multi-entity Chinese supplier: the five documents to request, which entity legally holds each one, and the three questions a supplier's own website cannot answer.

• Incoterms 2020 and Dangerous Goods: Where Risk, Cost and Liability Actually Transfer

  The Incoterm decides where risk, cost and liability transfer. For dangerous goods, it also decides who signs the declarations — and a wrong choice creates a.

• Document Consistency Across a Multi-Entity Supply Chain: The Four Names That Must Match

  When goods move between legal entities, the risk is not the goods — it is that four documents carry four different names for what is supposed to be one transaction.