FOB or CIF: which to ask for on your first feed ingredient container
Most Chinese feed ingredient suppliers, including us, quote FOB by default. Buyers new to the trade often ask for CIF instead, because a single landed number is easier to compare. Both are reasonable choices, but they move risk and control in different directions.
What FOB actually means
Free on board means the seller delivers the goods onto the vessel at the load port. From the moment the cargo is on board, the risk and the cost of the sea freight are yours. You arrange the shipping, or your freight forwarder does.
The advantage is transparency and control. You see the goods price and the freight price separately, you choose the carrier and the routing, and you can use a forwarder you already trust.
What CIF changes
Cost, insurance and freight means the seller arranges and pays for shipping and marine insurance to your named destination port. You get one number.
The trade off is visibility. You cannot see how the freight was priced, you do not choose the carrier, and if the seller books a cheap slow service to protect their margin, you carry the delay. The insurance cover under CIF is also minimum cover by default, which is often thinner than buyers assume.
A practical recommendation
If you already have a freight forwarder and you ship regularly, take FOB. You will almost always beat the seller freight rate, and you keep control of the schedule.
If this is your first container and you have no forwarder relationship, CIF is a defensible way to reduce the number of moving parts, as long as you ask for the carrier name, the transit time, and the insurance cover level in writing before you agree the price.
One thing to check either way
Confirm who pays destination charges. Terminal handling, documentation and delivery order fees at your port are yours under both terms, and they are the most common source of an unexpected invoice on a first shipment.
Related reading
The Real Cost of Importing Feed Ingredients from China: FOB, CIF and What Buyers Miss
A quoted price is rarely the landed cost. Here is what FOB and CIF actually cover, and the three cost categories that sit outside both.
How to read a soybean meal certificate of analysis
Crude protein is the number everyone quotes. Urease activity and lysine are the numbers that tell you whether the meal will actually perform.
The documents you need to import feed ingredients, and the ones that hold containers at port
A container rarely gets stuck because of the cargo. It gets stuck because one certificate is missing, wrong, or issued against the wrong limit.
Tell us the product, the tonnage and the port
Send those three things and we come back with a delivered price, a full specification and a recent certificate of analysis. Usually the same working day.