Eucerin — Wholesale Supply

Dating on a cosmetic does not read like dating on a food

The question that stalls more pharmacy orders than any other is minimum life on receipt, and it stalls them because the buyer's contract language was written for groceries. Under European cosmetic rules a product whose minimum durability exceeds thirty months is not required to carry a date at all. Instead it carries the period-after-opening mark, the small open-jar symbol with a number of months beside it, which tells a consumer how long the product remains suitable once opened and tells a warehouse nothing whatsoever about how long the sealed unit has been sitting. Products with shorter durability do carry a date of minimum durability. Separately, and always, there is a batch code, printed or embossed, which is the reference that ties a physical unit back to a production run.

So a clause demanding a stated number of months remaining against a printed expiry is unenforceable on a large part of a skincare range, because there is no printed expiry to measure against. What is workable is narrower and more honest.

On the pack	What it tells you	How we handle it
Batch code	Which production run the unit belongs to	Stated on the pro-forma and packing list for the lot offered
Period-after-opening mark	Suitability after the consumer opens it	Reported as it appears; it is not a stock-age figure
Date of minimum durability	Applies where durability is under thirty months	Where printed, the position of the offered lot is confirmed in writing

Bring your own standard to the enquiry and we will tell you whether the lot in front of us meets it. What we will not do is quote a blanket figure across a range and then load whatever is on the floor.

What a pharmacy wholesaler asks before listing an import

Pharmacy channels apply a different standard of curiosity from grocery, and it is a reasonable one. They want to know how the goods have been held, who has touched them, and whether the article is the same one their regulator and their software expect. Stock here is held ambient and dry, away from direct heat, in the manufacturer's own sealed packaging, unopened and unrelabelled. Every consignment carries its batch references, which means a unit can be traced from the Madrid floor through to your clearing agent without a chain of custody having to be taken on somebody's word.

The rest of the answer is a matter of what we do not claim. Iguazu Trading is an independent distributor of genuine EU-sourced stock, not an appointed or exclusive one, and we say so on every page. Ingredient declaration, the responsible person's details and the languages printed on the carton are fixed at manufacture and cannot be adjusted by a wholesaler; we confirm which market version and label set the offered allocation carries so you can assess it against your own requirement before the money moves. If the answer is that the pack does not suit your destination, that is better established now.

Families behave differently in a warehouse

Buyers order families rather than brands, and the families do not resemble one another once they reach a pallet. Aquaphor is small, dense and high repeat, and more than one account has opened on it alone. Hyaluron-Filler carries the highest value per case, which changes the insurance and valuation conversation on a consignment more than it changes the loading plan. UreaRepair moves in large body formats that consume pallet space quickly. DermoPure, Atopi and pH5 are the specialist end that a counter lists to look complete rather than to drive volume. Sun protection is bought against a season, and the season at destination is what sets the loading window rather than the month the goods are wanted — a northern-hemisphere buyer confirming late in the spring is competing for what is left rather than choosing from a range.

Which families are genuinely open at any moment is a matter of allocation, so we quote what can be loaded in your shipping window instead of publishing a range list you cannot buy from. Buyers assembling a full parapharmacy counter rather than a single brand usually price La Roche-Posay from the same warehouse in the same enquiry, since the two are shelved side by side in most pharmacy fixtures and rarely listed in isolation.

Broad and shallow makes a different pallet

A pharmacy assortment is wide and thin: many references, few cases behind each. That shape produces mixed pallets rather than single-reference ones, and mixed pallets are only useful if the receiving team can work them without a reconciliation exercise. Ours are wrapped and labelled individually, with the contents legible per pallet rather than aggregated across the load, which matters when a broad order arrives into a warehouse that has to break it straight into a fixture. It also matters at clearance, since a broad cosmetic order can touch more tariff lines than a single-family one and a broker reads the packing list before anything else.

How the cases stack into a layer, the layers into a pallet and the pallets into a box is written onto the pro-forma for the specific allocation, never published as a standing figure. They move with format, and a configuration quoted from memory is how a container arrives short.

Quantities, terms and where the goods leave from

Orders run from a single case up through pallets to a full container, and a load carrying several brands is routine rather than a concession. Terms are EXW Madrid — the warehouse, not a quay — or FOB, CFR, CIF and DAP; DDP is not part of the standard offer. Valencia and Barcelona are the deep-sea gateways, each about a day's road haul from the loading point, with Algeciras available for transhipment and Coslada for rail. Exports go worldwide, and each destination's own cosmetic import requirements, including any registration or notification of the product or the importing entity, remain the responsibility of the importer of record.

Consignments travel with the commercial invoice, packing list, export declaration, transport document and Certificate of Origin, with a EUR.1 movement certificate where a preferential agreement applies and the goods qualify on manufacture rather than on purchase. If something arrives that does not match the pro-forma, how a claim is handled sets out the sequence and the evidence we ask for, which is a more useful thing to read before an order than after one.