Trade term
Paying for an orange order in advance
Payment in advance means the money leaves before the fruit does, and the buyer carries the whole exposure until the pallets are unloaded and accepted. It is where two companies that have never traded start, and it is the one arrangement in this family the perishable payment rules have nothing to say about, because those rules cap lateness.
The figures
| What moves first | The money, before the load is built |
|---|---|
| Who carries the risk | The buyer, until the fruit arrives and is accepted |
| What secures the payment | The contract and the seller's name |
| Statutory payment deadline | Out of scope, because the rule caps delay and not speed |
What it changes on an order
You are opening an account with a grower you have never met
A first prepayment buys a trading record more than it buys fruit. Size the first one so the lesson stays affordable if it turns out badly.
Your finance team is releasing funds against a proforma
The proforma should name the loading week, the consignee and the cultivar. One that names an amount and a bank account documents nothing for your auditor.
You are weighing a prepaid quote against a credit quote
Those are two different prices. The gap between them is the cost of money for the credit period, and it belongs inside the comparison rather than beside it.
What this note does not settle
- Nothing here states our terms. Whether a first order would be prepaid in full, in part, or not at all has not been agreed with anyone.
- Money sent ahead gives no hold over quality. Once it has moved, a disappointing arrival is argued rather than deducted.
- Bank details that arrive by email are the soft spot in this arrangement, and no web page can verify them for you.
Source: Directive (EU) 2019/633 on unfair trading practices, Article 3
The transfer is the weakest document in the file
On a prepaid order the buyer performs the only irreversible act. A proforma can be reissued, a loading week moved, a pallet plan redrawn, and none of that costs anything but time. A completed transfer sits outside that forgiving zone. Invoice redirection fraud lives in exactly this gap, and a citrus campaign makes comfortable ground for it, because the season manufactures urgency and urgency shortens checks. The request to pay a new account arrives from an address one character away from the one you have been writing to all week.
Verify bank details by voice, on a number you held before the conversation began, and verify them again the moment they change. Ask for the proforma to name the cultivar, the loading week and the consignee, so the payment your auditor reads about later attaches to something real. Where a supplier resists putting that on paper, the resistance itself is the information. None of this is peculiar to us. It is what a buyer owes their own company before sending money to a warehouse nobody has walked through.
A prepaid price is a financed price
Cash up front removes two costs from the seller's arithmetic. No credit risk has to be carried, and no working capital has to be funded between loading and payment. A seller who quotes the same figure while the buyer shoulders both is charging for a service nobody is providing. Ask what the credit price would be. Ask what the prepaid price would be. The distance between those two numbers is negotiable, and it is worth knowing before either of them is accepted.
Paying first also changes what happens when something goes wrong. With the money already gone, a short weight or a soft arrival turns into a claim against the next order rather than a deduction from this one, which suits whoever expects to keep trading and punishes whoever does not. Decide in advance where a shortfall lands, write that into the order, and keep the first prepaid load small enough for the answer to stay theoretical.
Talk to the grower
Tell us the variety, the sizes and the delivery week you need. You get a delivered price and what we can commit to in writing, from the person who picks the fruit.
The grower handles enquiries. Response times are still to be confirmed.