Three legs, and none of them cool
The first leg is short: our factory is in Gaziantep and Mersin port is about three hours awayby road, so consolidation and loading sit inside a narrow window.
The sea leg to the Atlantic coast is the long one, and where the consignment carries on to Brazzaville, that run is added after discharge. This market sits on the equator and the shelf is warm in every season, so chocolate and chocolate-coated lines are quoted in a reefer year round. Turkish delight, dragées, wrapped confectionery and jellies travel dry, and both share one container.
The source table is also a route table
The figures here are mirror data: this market does not report its own imports, so each column is what everyone else recorded as shipments to it. Read that as a direction, not a settled number.
On 2024 mirror figures the chocolate arriving is worth about 13,444,024 US dollars: Belgium 72.2 per cent, Morocco 6.6, Türkiye 5.2. Sugar confectionery is smaller at about 6,500,207 dollars, off three continents: Colombia 40.7 per cent, Morocco 25.2, India 8.0. Each is a long sea leg with a consolidator in the middle: what differs is not distance but how many hands the carton passes before yours.
Four terms, and where each one stops
FCA Gaziantep hands the goods over loaded at origin. FOB Mersin carries them to the port of loading, the three-hour road leg. CIF covers the sea leg and stops at the discharge port. DAP alone names a delivery point inland.
Ask for the same list on two terms and read the gap: it is the leg you would otherwise buy separately, priced now instead of invoiced later. Either way the offer names the discharge port, the transshipment assumed and the transit. If the box moves inland, say so at the quotation stage, not after the term is fixed.
Two declarations, neither of them ours
The importer holding the registration declares the consignment and answers for the description; no supplier holds that seat for you. Where the goods travel on after discharge, your clearing agent files that movement. The customs file is national; the offer states what applies on the day.
Our side is the paperwork both desks must accept: the technical data sheet, our certificates, the analysis report per line. Certificates areissued for our factory, so copies are available on request and the certifyingbody is named; gelatine lines carry our halal certificate.
The panel travels in French
Mandatory content is prepared in French, with English alongside where your file wants it: name of the food, ingredients with allergens, metric net weight, storage conditions, the importer’s name and address, the date marking. Producer-brand lines are confirmed against what the export pack carries; own-label content is built from our technical data sheet and checked against your artworkbefore printing.
Two words stay apart on the box. A coating made with vegetable fat is a compound or a glaze, and in the European Union it cannot be labelled chocolate at all. The jar line is a spread.
What to send so the route can be priced
Send the lines you want quoted and the format for each, wrapped bar, doypack, kilo carton, printed box or jar, with an indicative quantity, the discharge port, the inland delivery point, and whose brand the pack carries.
Ask for that list on two terms, DAP against CIF, so the inland leg comes back as a figure. One container carries several lines on one order and one documentset (mixed container). Couverture, bulk chocolate by the kilo, raw nuts, dried fruit, cocoa, baklava, halva and tahini sit outside the range: sourced on request, with composition and format confirmed before quoting (how wework).
We clear on the coast but the warehouse is inland. Which term reaches it?
DAP is the one of the four that names an inland delivery point, so the road leg after discharge is priced rather than left open. CIF stops at the discharge port with that run still ahead of you, while FCA Gaziantep and FOB Mersin hand over earlier and suit a buyer whose own forwarder controls the corridor. Ask for the same list on two terms and compare what moves between them.
Who declares the goods, and what comes from your side?
The importer holding the registration files the entry and answers for the description; where the consignment moves inland after discharge, your clearing agent files that movement. From us you receive the technical data sheet per product, our certificates, the analysis report per line. Certificates are issued for our factory, and the origin document and theapplicable rules are named in the offer in the form valid on the day.
Will chocolate survive an equatorial route?
Chocolate and chocolate-coated lines are quoted in a reefer year round on this route rather than only through a warm season, because there is not a cool one. Turkish delight, dragées and jellies travel dry and can share the same container. Where the final leg or the shelf is genuinely hot, compound-coated lines hold up better — and they are quoted, labelled and priced as compound, never as chocolate.
