US standards, inconsistent lab reports worry pepper exporters

Indian pepper exporters are worried due to the differing standards set by the US importers and the inconsistency of laboratory reports regarding the density of the commodity.

Increasing instances of heavy penalisation citing higher than prescribed content of light berries in the consignment is leading to situation where the exporters are finding it difficult to trade with US buyers, sources said.

?Presence of light berries in the export consignment in excess of 2% is heavily penalised by buyers in the US. This is applicable only in the US. If the content is more than 3% they will fail the lot saying it do not comply with the ASTA sanitation standards,? Jojan Malayil of Kochi-based Bafna Enterprises said.

Indian Malabar garbled pepper is the best among all the origins. Density of pepper is calculated by the weight for a litre volume of the commodity. Higher the weight for a litre, higher the quality of the pepper.

?If the light berry content is 2. 1% of the cargo, the exporter is penalised by 0.1% of his total revenue. Our cargo is passed by the Export Inspection Agency (EIA) after a thorough examination and often exporters don?t take any risk on quality,? Jojan said. Indian exporters are worried at the test results of some of the laboratories in the US.

?We are worried about the results from some US labs. They do confirm to our results. We have tried this with the state-run labs of Spices Board and other private labs,? he said.

Indian exporters report that the light berry content in any export consignment does not go above 1. 6 -1.9%.

?This has been happening for several years. Indonesia and Vietnam also face similar threats, but they can survive as their procurement cost is lower,? Kishore Shamji, one of the senior exporter and member of the India Pepper and Spice Trade Association (IPSTA) said.

?Some time back we faced the issue of higher than agreed bank charges. They asked or $600-650 as bank charges. We have taken a stand that we will not pay more than $50 as bank charges,? he said.

?Indian exporters have come to an agreement that we will ship a merchandise with minimum 575 g/l, which is supposed to be best density for buyers who grind and crack,? Jojan said.