The eight parameters that actually decide a spice price

A buyer sends the same enquiry to four exporters and gets back four numbers with a wide spread. The temptation is to read the spread as greed at the top or desperation at the bottom. Usually it is neither. It is that four people have quietly assumed four different specifications, and only one of them matches what you are going to do with the goods.

These are the parameters that move the price. Naming them in your enquiry is the single fastest way to get comparable quotes.

1. Purity and admixture

Purity is the percentage of the lot that is the product itself; admixture is everything else — stem, chaff, stone, seed of another species, dust. Getting from a field-run lot to a high purity takes repeated cleaning passes, and each pass costs money and loses weight. That is why purity is the parameter with the steepest price curve: the last fraction of a percent is far more expensive than the first several.

Say the number you need, and say whether it is measured by weight or by count.

2. Moisture

Moisture governs shelf life, mould risk and, bluntly, what you are paying for. Every extra point of moisture is water you bought at the price of spice, and it is water that will still be in the bag when the container sits in the sun at a transhipment port. Lower is not automatically better, though: over-dried material can become brittle and break up in handling, which shows up as broken percentage at the other end.

3. Mesh or particle size

For anything ground, mesh changes behaviour more than most buyers expect. A finer grind disperses colour faster and gives more surface area for flavour release, but it also cakes more readily and loses volatile oil quicker in storage. A coarser grind stays visible in a finished product, which is sometimes exactly the point.

Specify the mesh and specify how it is measured, because a sieve standard is not universal.

4. Colour

For chilli, paprika and turmeric, colour is priced separately from flavour and heat, and the industry measures it in ASTA units. The two move independently: a chilli can be brilliantly red and mild, or dull and ferocious. If your product is judged on appearance, colour is a contract parameter, not a nice-to-have.

5. Volatile oil

Volatile oil is the aroma. It is what makes cumin smell like cumin, and it falls steadily from the moment a spice is ground. This is why grinders often buy whole and mill to order, and why a specification for ground spice should carry a grind date as well as an oil percentage.

6. Heat or active content

The functional number differs by product: pungency for chilli, piperine for pepper, curcumin for turmeric, sennosides for senna, swell volume for psyllium husk. In each case it is the parameter your customer is really buying, and in each case it varies with variety and season rather than with how carefully the lot was cleaned.

7. Microbiology and treatment

Spices are agricultural products dried in the open, so a microbial specification is normal rather than an insult. What matters is how it is met. Steam sterilisation reduces counts without irradiation and is accepted in markets where irradiation is not. Irradiation is cheaper and is not permitted or not commercially acceptable everywhere. Either way it is a processing step with a cost, and it belongs in the quote.

8. Residue

Maximum residue levels differ by destination, and a lot that is perfectly compliant in one market can be rejected in another. Worse, many buyers are held to a retailer standard tighter than the legal one. Tell your supplier which standard applies to you. An exporter who does not know cannot select for it.

Putting it on one page

A workable enquiry names the product, the eight parameters that apply to it, the quantity, the packing, the destination port and the incoterm. It is a page of text and it will save you a fortnight of email.

If a quote comes back without a specification attached, it is a price for something unspecified, and the specification will be decided later by whoever is holding the goods.