Steel, building materials, geosynthetics, chemicals and site consumables — bought by spec, for one project or one bulk order. You pay the factory’s invoice price; we verify the certificate, weigh and gauge the goods at the plant, and load them as one container with one set of documents.
Perforated pipesOpen ends and perforations are visible here. Specify the material, diameter and wall thickness in your enquiry.
A machine that is wrong is visible at the gate. A material that is wrong is not: a 275 g/m² coating and a 120 g/m² coating look identical, and a 1.5 mm liner rolls up like a 2.0 mm one. In our own deliveries the commonest shortfalls are not the wrong product — they are the right product with less in it: grammage under the spec, thickness under the spec, steel tonnage under the weighbridge.
| Material | What the paper says | What we measure at the plant | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rebar, coil, plateper heat | Mill test certificate: grade, chemistry, mass | Certificate number confirmed with the issuing mill; weighbridge ticket against theoretical mass; one sample per heat to a third-party lab | ExampleMass 2.1% under theoretical — re-weighed, invoice corrected before payment |
| Geotextile, geomembrane, GCLper roll | Grammage, thickness, resin, roll length | Five 100 × 100 mm cut-outs across the roll weighed; thickness gauged mid-roll, not at the ends; resin batch matched to the datasheet | ExampleGrammage 8% under spec on two rolls — rolls replaced, lot re-sampled |
| Tiles, boards, profilesper batch | Calibre, thickness, coating, density | Thickness and calibre on random pieces; coating film thickness; count per pallet against the packing list | ExampleWithin spec — pallets filmed, sealed, loaded |
| Chemicalsper lot | Certificate of analysis: assay, moisture, packing | Lot number on the drum matches the COA; retained sample sealed; dangerous-goods labels and UN packaging checked before booking | ExampleWithin spec — retained sample kept 12 months |
Every check goes on one sheet per lot with photos, the weighbridge ticket and the lab report attached. You get the sheet before the balance is due; a lot that fails is not loaded.
Thickness & widthRead on the piece with a caliper, not copied from the datasheet. Photo: Pexels.
GrammageCut-outs weighed on a bench scale and multiplied back to g/m². Photo: Pexels.
Wrapped rollsCovered ends and bands are visible. Pack count and packed dimensions belong on the shipping list.
“The certificate can be manipulated. I once received an Excel file, and the guy from the mill said, ‘Put in whatever numbers you want and send it back to me, I’ll stamp it.’”
A Brazilian steel importer on Chinese coil, Fastmarkets, 11 November 2025. The same report describes coating that meets spec at the head and tail of the coil and not in the middle — which is why we gauge mid-roll.
In January 2025 Kenya’s standards bureau suspended a steel maker’s permit after its ribbed bar failed the standard; the bars were seized in the market, not at the port. A check that only happens after arrival is a check on paper.
Certificate or COA number confirmed with the mill or plant that issued it, not with the trader who forwarded it.
Steel by heat number, rolls by roll number, chemicals by lot — one sample each, sealed and sent to a lab you can name.
Weighbridge for tonnage, cut-outs and gauge for grammage and thickness — taken from the middle of the roll or bundle, where the shortfall hides.
Counted pallets and bundles are filmed and strapped in front of us; the container seal number goes on the sheet with the photos.
Materials are heavy and bulky, so the container — not the unit price — decides what a tonne or a square metre costs delivered. This is the whole bill, with the price basis written down, because the same steel can be quoted ex-works with VAT or FOB and the two do not reconcile later. Duty and VAT at your border are not in this bill — estimate them in the import duty & VAT calculator.
100%of the goods
0markup
9 / 13%statutory rebate
USD 60per person-day
70 / 30service terms
per boxquoted separately
Full rate card on the pricing page. Duties, VAT and clearance at your end are not in the service fee.
Illustrative — depends on gauge, roll width and packing. Above about 13 m³ a full box is usually cheaper than groupage once destination fees are counted (LCL vs FCL).
Roll size mattersRolls take up space before they reach a container. Packed length and diameter determine the loading plan.
Clients are not named; where a case page exists, the line links to it and the figures are the ones published there.
Dedicated mill run to the engineers’ standard, shipped break-bulk instead of in containers, discharged ship-to-truck 800 km from the site. Case →
Collected into one consolidation warehouse, inspected per batch, loaded as separate heavy and chemical fleets so nothing incompatible shared a box. Case →
Custom cross-sections cut from new dies, three-coat PVDF for 50 °C and sandstorms, every profile filmed and crated. Case →
Read the UN packaging mark, verify the transport classification and confirm importer-side requirements before booking. Read the guide →
Five material lines for one contractor, bought alongside the spare parts for its fleet.
The enquiry said “geotextile”; what the buyer needed was recycled-fibre felt, and that is what shipped.
We verify. The certificate number is confirmed with the issuing mill, the chemistry is checked against a sample from the same heat at a third-party lab, and the weighbridge ticket is matched to the theoretical mass. A certificate a trader typed himself does not pass this.
Steel and tiles, yes, planned by weight. Chemicals travel apart from anything they could damage, and dangerous-goods classes are segregated by the carrier’s rules. The load plan comes with the quote.
Whichever you ask for, written on the quote. The factory’s own invoice is at its domestic price including VAT; if you compare against an FOB quote from a trade fair, we show the conversion line by line so the two reconcile.
One container, or one truck for over-length pieces. For a sample order below that we point you to groupage.
| Your order looks like | What you send | What happens next |
|---|---|---|
| One project, several linesa runway, a landfill, a plant restock | The BOQ or the spec sheet as it is — geotextile and coating on one list is normal. | We split it by line and by plant, price each lot with its basis, and plan the boxes so incompatible goods never share one. One packing list, one set of documents. |
| One material, in bulk1,000 t of billet, 48 boxes of steel structure | Grade, standard, tonnage, delivery window — and any certificate you already hold. | We name the mill, not a trader, and check by heat and by box: certificate number, weighbridge, lab sample. A fixed price per box for the run where the mill agrees. |
| Under one containertwenty pipes, a pallet of felt | Nothing yet — read this first. | Our minimum is one container. Below that the destination fees eat the saving; LCL vs FCL explains when groupage still makes sense. |
A BOQ, a datasheet, a certificate you were given, or a line like “200 g/m² geotextile, 250,000 m², Almaty”. Within two working days you get it back priced per lot with the price basis, the box plan and the checks we will run at the plant.