A claim is rarely the first thing that went wrong. It is the last thing in a sequence that began weeks earlier, usually with a sentence in an email that both sides read differently. Understanding the sequence is more useful than understanding the claims process.
The five triggers
| Trigger | What is alleged | Usually traceable to |
|---|---|---|
| Grade non-conformance | Outthrows or prohibitives above the contracted limit | A grade agreed by description rather than number |
| Moisture | Content above the contracted maximum | A limit agreed without a method or point of measurement |
| Weight shortage | Discharged weight below the invoiced weight | Moisture loss in transit, or a weighing method never agreed |
| Contamination | Prohibited material present — plastic, wax, metal, unbleached fibre | Sorting at origin, or a grade whose exclusions were never read |
| Damage | Water staining, crushing, torn wrapping | Handling or stowage, occasionally pre-existing and undisclosed |
Look down the right-hand column. Three of the five have nothing to do with the material and everything to do with what was written before the container was booked.
Why the cost is asymmetric
A claim is expensive regardless of who prevails, and the expense is distributed unevenly across the timeline.
The material is already on the wrong continent. Returning it rarely makes economic sense, which means the realistic outcomes are an allowance, a discount, or a disposal at local value — all of which are losses against the contract. Meanwhile the container is occupying space, demurrage may be accruing, and the buyer's production plan has a hole in it that the claim does not fill.
This is why the discount offered to settle a claim is almost always worse than the discount that would have closed the deal honestly at the offer stage. The seller who describes material optimistically is not gaining margin. They are deferring a larger deduction and adding the cost of the dispute to it.
A claim settled is still a customer lost.
The financial settlement is the visible cost. The invisible one is that a purchasing department which has filed one claim will route the next inquiry elsewhere. In a trade where the material is a commodity and the relationship is the asset, that is the larger number.
What evidence actually settles one
When a claim does arise, it is resolved by documents, not by argument. The evidence that carries weight, in roughly descending order:
- An independent survey at discharge. Commissioned by either party or jointly, it is the closest thing to a neutral fact.
- The certificate of weight issued at loading, against the discharge weighing.
- Photographs taken at loading, timestamped, showing the material and the stuffing. These cost nothing and resolve a surprising share of disputes before they escalate.
- The signed offer showing the grade number and tolerance figures as agreed.
- Mill test data or QC reports where the material came with any.
Note what is missing from that list: email exchanges about what was intended, and verbal assurances. They carry almost no weight once a surveyor is involved.
Prevention, in order of effectiveness
- Contract the grade number. Not the description. This single habit removes the largest category.
- State both tolerance figures on the offer, and any tightening in writing.
- Settle moisture completely — limit, method, point, consequence.
- Photograph at loading. Every time, not only when the lot looks marginal.
- Disclose defects before booking. On off-grade and stock lot material especially, the disclosed defect is the basis of the price. The undisclosed one is the basis of the claim.
- Agree the inspection point and method in the contract, so that a disagreement has a predetermined forum.
The underlying principle
Every item on that list is a way of converting an expectation into a written specification before the material moves. A claim is what happens when an expectation survives to the discharge port without ever having been written down.
The documents that accompany a shipment, and what each is for, are covered in what arrives with a shipment. How moisture terms should be written is in moisture.