Global Logistics & Export

From allocation to seal

Give two buyers the same pallets and they can still land them at very different cost, and the divergence almost always happens before anything is loaded. So begin with the physical sequence; the commercial decisions hang off it.

Lines are committed against a named lot, picked, stacked to a configuration, wrapped and staged. Batch codes and best-before dates are captured while the pallets are being built, which is why the packing list describes what is in the container rather than what was ordered. Stuffing and sealing then happen at our Madrid consolidation facility, with the seal number recorded on the transport document. After that the unit is closed: whatever your agent breaks open at destination is what left here, which is the argument for sealing inland instead of in a shed beside a quay.

Consolidating away from the coast has two consequences worth stating. The first concerns EXW, where the delivery point is the seller's premises rather than a port or a forwarder's depot — collections are arranged in advance with the logistics desk, which releases the loading address and a collection reference when the booking is made, and a vehicle arriving without that reference cannot be loaded. The second is scheduling freedom: the gateway can be chosen later than a coastal shipper could choose it, because the cargo is not already committed behind one port's gate.

Four ways out of Madrid

Sitting inland is deliberate. Spain's two principal container gateways are both within a day's driving: Valencia at roughly 355 km, Barcelona at roughly 620 km. Between them they touch every lane a wholesale buyer works, which turns the port into something we choose inside your quotation instead of something you inherit. Selection follows the sailing and the transit time rather than habit, and where you run your own European forwarder we deliver into whichever terminal it nominates. The comparison of the two gateways goes through the trade-offs.

Algeciras plays a different role: a transhipment hub rather than a gateway serving its own hinterland, and often the right answer when a carrier's West African or transatlantic string calls there. Coslada — the Puerto Seco de Madrid — is the rail alternative, an inland terminal linked to the coastal ports, which suits cargo whose timing fits a train better than a truck.

The fourth route skips shipping altogether. Deliveries within continental Europe, and road corridors into Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Turkey and across to North Africa, run by truck under a CMR consignment note, as groupage or as a dedicated trailer once volume justifies one. That is precisely why a pallet-scale order can work on a short lane and rarely does on a deep-sea one.

Choosing between a box, a share of a box and a pallet

Three structures exist, and the right one follows your stock turn rather than a rule we apply.

A full container is the cheapest per case and the tidiest file: a single unit, one transport document, one clearance event, closed here and opened at your warehouse. It becomes the obvious answer as soon as your range can fill the cube, since an under-filled box is charged much like a full one. Groupage puts your cargo alongside other shippers' — cheaper to commit to, dearer per case, and slower door to door, because a shared unit is cleared and broken down as a whole before anybody's goods are released. Case and pallet quantities exist for replenishment, range trials and promotional buys, and they are where most container relationships start.

Every structure runs into the same two ceilings. A container has a legal weight limit and a fixed internal volume, and real loads rarely exhaust both. Bottled water, PET soft drinks, glass and liquid detergents reach the weight limit with floor space to spare; cased crisps, nappies and tissue exhaust the volume while the payload is still modest. Getting a dense base under a bulky top is the largest single lever anyone has on freight per case, and it is worked out while the order list is drafted — our guide to pallets and containers shows the arithmetic. Your specific case counts, layer patterns and pallet totals appear on the pro-forma against the lot offered, not copied from a generic table, because they move with format and stack height.

Why most boxes leaving here are mixed

Multi-category loads are the norm, and they are the substantive reason to buy through a distributor instead of chasing ten brand owners: drinks, chocolate, coffee, crisps, sauces, cleaning products, personal care, skincare and baby lines can share one invoice, one bill of lading and one clearance. The freight is bought once and so is the customs event.

Mixed pallets — several lines stacked on a single pallet, as opposed to several pallets sharing a container — are standard for smaller programmes and for buyers proving a range before they commit to a box. They are built to a stated pattern and itemised line by line so that both your broker and your goods-in team can work from the paperwork.

What can and cannot share a unit is far cheaper to resolve on the order list than on the loading bay. Scented detergents are kept away from products that absorb odour. Anything requiring temperature control is ruled out of an ocean move at the range-building stage. Aerosols and certain cosmetic formats attract dangerous-goods classification, which changes the documentation, occasionally narrows the choice of carrier and sometimes decides the port. Tell us the full intended range early and these get engineered around instead of discovered late.

Incoterms 2020: what each rule actually moves

A delivery term is neither a price nor a service level. It fixes the point at which our responsibility stops and yours starts, decides who contracts the carriage, and allocates risk in between — which is why two offers for identical cases can look nothing like each other. Every term is quoted with its named place, since a three-letter rule without a location is not a contractual position.

Term	We arrange	You arrange	Typically suits
EXW Madrid	Goods picked, palletised and released against a collection booked with the logistics desk	Loading, export formalities, haulage, ocean leg, clearance	Buyers already running a European consolidation programme
FOB Valencia / Barcelona	Haulage to the port, export clearance, delivery on board	Ocean contract, insurance, destination clearance and delivery	Buyers with negotiated carrier rates
CFR named port	As FOB, plus ocean freight to your discharge port	Insurance, duty, clearance, inland move	Markets where cover must be placed locally
CIF named port	As CFR, plus marine insurance	Duty, clearance, inland move	Comparing one delivered figure against a local landed cost
DAP named address	Carriage to the address you name	Import duty and taxes as importer of record	First orders into a market still being tested

Two points cost buyers real money. Under CIF the goods are at your risk from the moment they are on board, notwithstanding that the ocean freight is on our invoice — the insurance exists precisely because those two things separate. And no delivery term reassigns a tax liability: duty and import taxes follow the importer of record whatever the invoice says. DDP is outside our standard offer for that reason. Buyers typically work down the ladder as confidence grows, beginning at DAP or CIF while a range is unproven and moving to CFR, FOB or EXW once their own clearing arrangements make it worthwhile. The Incoterms 2020 reference unpacks each rule, and the terms page covers the commercial conditions attached.

Paperwork that rides with the cargo

Four documents are constant: the commercial invoice, the packing list, the export declaration and the transport document matching the mode used — bill of lading, sea waybill, CMR or air waybill.

Evidence of origin depends on where production happened, not on whose name is printed on the case. Lines that satisfy EU preferential origin, on lanes whose agreement provides for the instrument, travel with a EUR.1 movement certificate. Where no agreement covers the destination — the Gulf states and Nigeria being the obvious examples — the consignment carries a Certificate of Origin instead, frequently chamber-certified and sometimes requiring legalisation, and it reduces nobody's duty. A supplier prepared to promise EUR.1 for any destination on request has told you how carefully they read agreements.

On top of that sit the destination's own demands, and these are the ones to raise in a first message: health, sanitary or free-sale certificates; conformity assessment or product registration completed before shipment; consular or chamber legalisation; halal attestation where gelatine appears; composition, ingredient and allergen statements. A number of them have to be arranged while the goods are still here and cannot be back-dated once a vessel has sailed, which is why the question of what your clearing agent needs belongs in the quotation rather than at the loading bay. The documentation reference works through the sequence.

Corridor detail, and what we need from you

Requirements diverge sharply once you name a destination, so the specifics live on the market notes: the Emirates and the Gulf, Britain after Brexit and Nigeria differ on preference, conformity and labelling in ways that change what belongs in a container. The full picture — every continent, and how the file changes across them — is on the export markets overview, with the vocabulary defined in the export glossary.

To price freight rather than estimate it we need the discharge port or delivery address, the term you trade on, the lines with their formats, and any destination requirement your agent has already raised. From those we confirm what can be allocated, the dating, the pallet and container build and the document set. Where shipments repeat, a trade account means later quotations come back against terms already agreed rather than starting over each time.