Barilla Pasta — Wholesale Supply & Export

Quote the number, not the shape name

Pasta is one of the few grocery lines where two competent parties can agree on a product and still mean different things. Shape names travel badly: the same word covers different articles in different countries, and a cut the buyer pictured one way turns up another. Every pack carries a numbered cut reference, and putting that number next to the pack size removes the ambiguity in one line of an email. It is the single most useful habit an importer can build in this category, and it heads off the classic first-order failure — a container of the right brand in the wrong shape.

For ordering purposes the range splits into long cuts, meaning bucatini, linguine, spaghettini and spaghetti, and short shapes such as rigatoni, penne rigate, mezze maniche, farfalle and fusilli, with egg pasta, wholewheat, the free-from lines and the jarred sauces and pesto alongside them. Give us the numbers and the pack sizes and the offer answers those references specifically, with the packing detail set out for each one instead of inherited from an earlier booking. The rest of the ambient grocery range we load from Madrid is handled the same way, and pasta consolidates with most of it without difficulty.

Which market the box was printed for

Retail packs made for the European market carry the ingredient list and allergen information, the nutrition declaration, net quantity and durability marking required by EU food information rules, and the language set is whatever the pack was printed for rather than whatever the buyer would prefer. Durum wheat semolina runs through the range and egg appears in the all'uovo lines, which is easy enough to plan around. The languages and the operator details on the carton are the harder part: a pack printed for Spain and a pack printed for Germany are different articles at a border even though the pasta inside them is identical.

Where a destination wants extra particulars in a local language and allows over-labelling, the sticker is usually treated as part of the label rather than as an accessory to it, which makes it a question to close before an order and not at a clearance window. We state the market version of the allocation in writing, and we do not apply stickers, repack or decant anything into other cartons. Goods leave in the manufacturer's own sealed packaging or they do not leave.

Configuration is confirmed, never remembered

An order is written in cases and a booking is filled with pallets, and the conversion between the two is where costings quietly fail. How many cases make a layer, how many layers make a pallet and how many pallets fill the box are three numbers that move with every change of shape, pack size or pallet base. They are therefore stated on the pro-forma for the exact allocation on offer, with gross weights beside them, and any figure carried over from a previous shipment is treated as unverified until it has been checked against this one. Short shipments almost always trace back to a configuration nobody re-read.

Geometry then separates the two families. A carton of spaghetti or linguine is close to a solid rectangular block of product with very little waste inside it, and it stacks one way without argument. Short shapes are hollow, curved or twisted, so the box holds a good deal of air between the pieces before it holds anything else, and the same tonnage takes up appreciably more of the container. A twenty-foot and a forty-foot unit will not, therefore, carry the two families in proportion, and an assortment leaning on short shapes costs more per tonne to move than one leaning on long ones. That is an observation for planning rather than a preference between cuts. It simply means the range and the box are decided in the same conversation.

While a market is still being learned, spreading several cuts across one pallet lets a buyer read the range before committing to a programme. Once demand is understood, keeping a single cut to a pallet speeds up the receipt and reduces mis-picks in the destination warehouse.

Stowage: semolina takes up smells

Dry pasta has a long ambient life, which is exactly why it gets handled carelessly. Two things spoil it in transit and neither leaves an obvious mark on the outside of a carton.

The first is humidity. Board that absorbs moisture in a hot, poorly ventilated box goes soft, stains and loses its stacking strength, so the load wants dunnage between it and the container floor and a stow that does not trap condensation against it. The second is odour. Semolina takes up smells readily, so pasta must not travel against detergents, soaps, scented household lines or anything else with a strong volatile character. Say that explicitly to whoever plans a mixed load: a container that looks efficient on a stowage plan can arrive holding a consignment that is technically undamaged and commercially finished. Durability is printed in the manufacturer's own convention, and remaining life on arrival is a fair thing to negotiate — we answer it for the lot being offered rather than with a house average, since the lot being offered is what reaches your dock.

Made in Italy, cleared on the paperwork

The stock we hold is manufactured inside the European Union, and it is that fact — not the brand's nationality, and not our own registration in Spain — on which any preference claim rests. Where the receiving country has a preferential agreement in force with the EU and the consignment meets its rules, a EUR.1 movement certificate can be issued; where it does not, a Certificate of Origin travels instead. Importers build landed costs on the first and receive the second often enough that it is worth asking which applies while the offer is still open. A duty rate you assumed and a duty rate you can evidence are not the same number at the same counter.

Around that sit the commercial invoice, packing list, export declaration and transport document, with health or free-sale certificates arranged where a destination authority asks for them on foodstuffs. For a first food shipment rather than a repeat, what each export document is for explains who issues each one and what it actually proves.

Letting a trial pallet do the arguing

Shape preference is local and stubborn, and no supplier's opinion about it survives contact with a real till roll. Two long cuts and a couple of short ones will carry almost any opening listing; beyond that, the sensible route is to buy narrow, watch what turns and put the weight of the second order behind the answer. Wholewheat and free-from lines behave as extensions of a developed category rather than as openers for a new one. Egg pasta and the jarred sauces repay a fixture positioned as Italian food rather than as a starch staple, and a bay that puts the sauce beside the pasta converts better than one that sends the shopper to another aisle to find it.

Because dry pasta is light for its bulk, the container behind that decision usually has payload left in it, and unused payload is capacity you pay to move regardless. Heinz by the pallet is the usual companion: dense, ambient, sold to the same buyer, and cleared on the same document set.