How to write a millet specification for import

The specification is the contract. Six parameters, a tolerance band and a sealed sample will settle almost every dispute before it starts.

A millet contract fails in one of two places: the grain that arrives is not the grain that was agreed, or nobody can prove what was agreed in the first place. The specification is what closes both gaps. It is worth ten minutes of your time before the first sample ever ships.

The six parameters that actually govern a lot

Long specifications are not better specifications. Six parameters carry almost all of the commercial risk in a dehulled small millet, and each of them controls something specific.

• Moisture, 12 % max. The single most important number. Grain above roughly 12 % carries mould and insect risk through a long transit, and moisture is also the cheapest way for a seller to add weight. Fix it, and test it at load.
• Foreign matter, 0.1 % max. Stones, chaff, dust, string, anything that is not grain. Small millets are fine-grained, so a percentage that sounds generous on rice is tight here.
• Broken grain, 2 % max. Dehulling breaks kernels. How many depends on the variety and the care taken. Broken fractions cook differently and look wrong on a retail shelf.
• Purity, 99.5 % min. The proportion that is the variety you bought.
• Admixture, 0.5 % max. Other food grains. Distinct from foreign matter, and worth stating separately, because the two get conflated and then argued about.
• Infestation, nil, live or dead. Live infestation is a rejection at most destinations. Dead insects are still a defect and still visible.

Those are the limits we publish and contract to. If your line needs tighter, say so at enquiry and we will grade to your number rather than to the standard.

State a tolerance, not just a target

A specification without tolerances is an argument waiting to happen. Analysis has variance, sampling has variance, and two laboratories testing the same lot will not return identical figures. Agree the band up front: moisture plus or minus 0.5 %, foreign matter plus or minus 0.05 %, broken plus or minus 0.5 %. Now a result inside the band is a pass rather than a negotiation.

The approved sample outranks the words

Numbers do not describe colour, size uniformity or general appearance well. That is what the sealed approved sample is for. Loading should proceed only on your written approval of a pre-shipment sample, and that sample should then be sealed and retained in three sets, one each for buyer, supplier and surveyor. Six months is a sensible retention period.

If a claim ever arises, it is settled against the sealed sample. Without one, both sides are arguing from memory and correspondence, which is to say from nothing.

Name the residue regime

The Indian standard and the destination standard are not the same, and the stricter of the two should govern your contract. EU limits on aflatoxin are several times tighter than the Indian limits, for instance. If your buyer sits in a market with its own thresholds, put them in the specification rather than assuming the exporter will guess. Our published residue panel shows the parameters we test and the limits on each side.

Put packing in the specification too

Bag weight, bag material, whether a food-grade liner is required, how the bag is closed, palletised or floor-loaded, and any marking on the outer. For retail, the dieline, the artwork and the language requirements of the destination. These are as contractual as moisture, and they are the details that most often get settled by email and then forgotten.

What to leave out

Do not specify anything you will not test and will not enforce. A specification with twenty parameters, half of them never checked, teaches the seller that the document is decorative. Six parameters that are tested on every lot, with a certificate of analysis to prove it, are worth more than twenty that are not.