Wholesale Terms & Shipping — Palm Leaf Plates from India

Minimum Order Quantity (MOQ) & Container Loading

The minimum order is one 40ft High Cube container, with at least 200 cartons of each product inside it. LCL consolidation is not accepted. Free samples of 50–200 pieces ship within 5 working days ahead of any container order.

Why the MOQ sits at container level

Palm leaf economics only work at full-container scale. Production is distributed across 90+ pressing units and consolidated at one hub for quality control, cleaning, packing and warehousing; the per-piece cost of a half-loaded container roughly doubles once haulage, port handling and documentation are spread over fewer cartons. That is why LCL is not offered and why the 200-carton per-product floor exists — below it, a product line cannot be picked, checked and stacked efficiently in the load plan.

Buyers below container scale — single-site restaurants, caterers and event-rental businesses — are served through Ecodyne distributors in their own market, who break bulk locally. Ask at enquiry stage and we will point you to the nearest one. Importers who want to test a market first can start with one 20ft container of Ecodyne-branded product; most move to 40ft HC from the second order, because the landed cost per piece falls sharply once the cube is fully used.

Mixed loads are the norm, not the exception. Most importers run six to twelve products per 40ft HC — a spread of round plates, square plates, bowls, compartment plates, platters and trays — and Ecodyne applies no surcharge for a mixed load. Every product line is listed separately on the packing list with piece count, carton count and gross weight, so receiving and put-away at your warehouse can be checked line by line. Ecodyne does not produce cups.

Palm leaf tableware is volume-constrained rather than weight-constrained: a full 40ft HC weighs roughly eight to twelve tonnes, far below the payload limit, so the cube fills long before the axle weight does. Piece count moves with the mix — a container heavy in large round plates and platters lands at the lower end of the range, one heavy in bowls and small plates at the upper end — and retail-ready packaging with 10-piece inner packs reduces the total count because the cartons run slightly larger. Model your own mix with the palm leaf container calculator.

Incoterms & Export Port

FOB New Mangalore Port is the standard basis for Ecodyne wholesale orders. FOB Mumbai is possible at extra land-haulage cost, and CIF or CFR is quoted on request. All quotations and shipping documents reference Incoterms 2020.

FOB or CIF — how to choose

FOB and CIF transfer risk at exactly the same moment: when the goods are on board the vessel at the port of shipment. The difference is who pays for the voyage. Under FOB the buyer pays ocean freight and marine insurance and nominates the carrier; under CIF the seller pays both and invoices them as part of the contract value. Neither term covers destination port handling, import clearance, duty, VAT or inland transport — those remain with the buyer in both cases. The authoritative reference is the ICC Incoterms 2020 rules.

Importers who ship monthly or quarterly almost always prefer FOB, for three reasons. Their nominated forwarder holds negotiated carrier and consolidator rates that a seller-arranged freight line rarely matches. Cargo insurance is easier to place under their own all-risks policy than to accept as the minimum-cover tier normally supplied under CIF. And documentary control is cleaner: the buyer’s forwarder issues the master bill of lading, with Ecodyne named as shipper, so there is no seller-side freight invoice to reconcile at entry. Customs valuation is also simpler, because the FOB invoice value is already the transaction value declared on entry, with no freight or insurance build-back required.

First-time importers without a forwarder in the destination market are the case for CIF or CFR, and Ecodyne will quote either on request. A third route also works well: keep the contract on FOB New Mangalore and ask your own forwarder to quote “all-in to destination” against that booking, which gives you a single landed-cost number without changing the contract basis. EXW, DAP and DDP are not offered — they move a block of origin or destination customs work to a party that cannot control it.

Buyer-side cost lines to add to an FOB invoice

Indicative ranges for a 40ft HC from New Mangalore to a North European port, to be added to the Ecodyne FOB invoice value when you build a landed cost. Verify each line with your forwarder and customs broker for the current sailing season.

The 10-Working-Day Loading Commitment

The commitment is a loading timeline, not a door-to-door timeline, and the two end points matter for procurement planning. It starts when the confirmed purchase order is in hand and the 70% deposit has cleared — not at quotation, not at purchase-order issue, and not on the day your bank initiates the wire. It ends when the loaded, sealed container is at New Mangalore Port and released for vessel loading. Ocean transit runs on the carrier’s schedule and sits outside the commitment.

Working days exclude Sundays and Indian public holidays. The reason ten days is achievable is structural rather than procedural: Ecodyne holds 3 million+ finished pieces in standing stock across the main products, so most of a container is picked, inspected and packed from inventory rather than produced from scratch. Any short lines are topped up from the pressing units as first priority.

What happens across the ten days

What the 1% per day penalty covers — and what it does not

One per cent of invoice value is deducted for each day the container is late through any fault on Ecodyne’s side — a production miss, a quality-control rework, a packing error, or a missed factory-to-port window on an Ecodyne-controlled truck. The clause is written into the supply agreement and settled as a credit against the balance payment or the next order; on a container invoiced at USD 48,000, three days late would be a USD 1,440 credit.

The penalty does not apply to delay caused outside Ecodyne’s control: buyer-side changes to the order after confirmation, late deposit, late shipping marks, late forwarder nomination or bill-of-lading details; force majeure such as port strikes, weather or government closures; carrier schedule slippage and vessel rolling after the container is at port; and customs clearance at destination. Those risks belong to the carrier contract and your Incoterms position, not to the loading clause.

Keeping the timeline on track

Most slippage is preventable and sits on the buyer side. Process the deposit within 24 hours of order confirmation — the clock does not start until it clears. Lock the product mix before the purchase order is cut, because a mid-process change forces stock re-allocation and possibly supplementary pressing. And specify destination-specific documentation requirements at purchase-order stage: an extra certificate, a destination-language invoice or a particular HS line is simple to build in on Day 1 and slow to add on Day 8.

The commitment holds every month of the year, including the June–October period when areca leaf sheaths are not shedding in commercial volumes. Ecodyne stockpiles raw material and finished goods during the November–May shedding season specifically so that customers do not have to plan their purchasing around an Indian harvest calendar. The supply base behind that buffer — 810 farming families across four districts of Karnataka — is what makes year-round availability possible.

Export Documentation

Shipping documents travel with every container at no additional charge. Certificates and laboratory test reports are a separate pack, sent free to buyers on request.

Tariff line and additional documents

Palm leaf tableware is normally entered under HSN 4602.19 — chapter 46, manufactures of plaiting materials, heading 4602, articles made directly to shape from plaiting materials. Classification and the duty rate that applies to it must be confirmed by your customs broker in the destination market, because minor variations apply by jurisdiction and preference regime. The HSN code 4602 customs guide sets out duty and food-contact rules for the EU, UK and US in more detail.

Also available on request: a material safety data sheet, third-party pre-shipment inspection reports from an agency such as SGS or Intertek, and destination-specific compliance documentation. Tell us at purchase-order stage which documents your customs authority or retail customer requires; they are straightforward to prepare alongside the shipment and slow to add once the container is packed. Ecodyne publishes only its statutory registrations online — IEC, GSTIN and Udyam numbers are on the contact page.

Quality Grades & Product Specification

Three tiers are quoted, and they are graded on appearance only. Leaf thickness is a natural property of the sheath and is never sorted, graded or sold as a specification. Every tier is pressed from the same naturally fallen areca leaf sheaths under heat and pressure, with no chemicals, dyes, binders or coatings.

The range covers plates, bowls, platters, trays and compartment plates; cups are not produced. Plate rims are offered in two profiles — Classic at 3 mm for dry food and Standard at 5 mm for wet and saucy dishes — and the rim choice, not the grade, is what to specify when the end use involves gravies or oily food. State the tier and rim profile in your enquiry so the quotation and the samples match what you intend to sell.

Four pillars that turn promises into contractual commitments

Wholesale terms are easy to publish and hard to deliver. Ecodyne’s hold because they rest on four operating pillars, each of them measurable and each of them written into the supply contract.

Questions buyers ask before signing

About Ecodyne Tableware — Wholesale Terms & Compliance

Ecodyne Tableware is the export brand of Conservia Partners, a partnership firm founded in 2009 and exporting palm leaf tableware since 2010. Production runs through 90+ distributed pressing units across roughly 200,000 sq ft in Karnataka, feeding a 20,000 sq ft hub at Bhadravathi that handles quality control, cleaning, packing and warehousing; the hub runs fully on solar power and a majority of the pressing units are solar too. Production capacity is around 4.5 million pieces a month, with 3 million+ pieces held in standing stock, and Ecodyne ships 36–60 × 40ft HC containers a year to distributors in 19 countries. The material comes from naturally fallen areca leaf sheaths supplied by 810 farming families across four districts of Karnataka, pressed with heat and pressure and nothing else. Products are tested to LFGB standards and confirmed compliant by TÜV Rheinland, EN 13432 tested and passed, made under an ISO 9001 quality system issued by TÜV India, with the operation amfori BSCI audited; certificates and test reports are sent free on request, and only statutory registrations are published online. Unless another Incoterm is agreed, every shipment travels FOB New Mangalore Port under the terms set out above — 10-working-day loading, 1% per day delay penalty, and the full shipping document pack for clearance at your destination port. See the manufacturing process for how the pieces are made.