Trade term
Open account, and who sets your credit limit
Open account means the fruit ships, the invoice follows and the payment lands later, with no bank standing between the two companies. The seller carries the entire risk for the whole period, and the size of that risk is decided before anyone talks about it, by a credit assessor reading the buyer's own filed accounts.
The figures
| What moves first | The fruit |
|---|---|
| Who carries the risk | The seller, for the length of the credit period |
| What the ceiling attaches to | The buyer's name, not the individual order |
| Who writes the ceiling | The seller's credit insurer or credit department |
| Longest period allowed | Capped by the perishable produce rule |
What it changes on an order
You are requesting terms from a supplier for the first time
Attach your latest filed accounts to the request. The assessor works from what is on file, and what sits on file is often a year behind the business you are describing.
You already hold good terms elsewhere
A limit belongs to a pair of companies. Two assessors reading identical accounts land on different figures, so a ceiling earned with one supplier does not travel to the next.
You are scaling a seasonal programme upwards
What stops the fourth load is the remaining headroom under the ceiling rather than the crop. Ask early what headroom looks like at peak, not at the start.
What this note does not settle
- Whether we would sell on open account is undecided, and no cover on our side has been arranged or ruled out. Read this as the instrument explained.
- A ceiling is withdrawn as quietly as it is granted, and the supplier hears first. Your own purchasing plan should not assume it survives the campaign.
- Filed accounts describe a year that has closed. They say little about the week your payment run actually falls due.
Source: Directive (EU) 2019/633 on unfair trading practices, Article 3
The assessment happens before anyone speaks
By the time a buyer asks for terms, most of the answer already exists. Limited companies across the Union file annual accounts on a public register, and credit assessors read those filings for a living. They watch how the balance sheet has moved, whether the filing arrived on time, and what other suppliers have reported about payment behaviour. A late filing reads as a signal whatever sits behind it, and the reason behind it never reaches the file.
There is a practical consequence worth acting on. Send your most recent accounts with the request instead of waiting to be asked, and say plainly what has changed since the period they cover. An assessor working from stale filings falls back on the worst available reading. A buyer who supplies the missing year, and who names a supplier willing to confirm how the account has been paid, is answering the question that decides the ceiling.
A ceiling can be cut in the middle of a campaign
Cover is granted quietly, reviewed continuously, and reduced without ceremony when something moves in the buyer's sector. The supplier gets told. The buyer frequently does not, and discovers it when an order sits unconfirmed. In citrus that timing has teeth, because the crop arrives inside a window and the window does not reopen. A ceiling trimmed in midwinter strands a programme with nowhere to go at short notice.
Two habits blunt the damage. Ask a supplier at the start of the season what headroom exists at peak volume rather than at the opening order, since peak is where the ceiling bites. Then keep a second source warm for the same weeks. Neither habit costs anything while the arrangement holds, and both pay for themselves in the week it stops holding.
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.