Raw Cashew Nuts (RCN)

Shelling and processing companies are the primary buyers. They are purchasing input for a plant with fixed throughput, so their arithmetic is recovery per tonne of raw material and the size distribution of the kernels that come out. A processor running a line calibrated for a particular nut size will pay attention to count as closely as to outturn.

Trading houses and importers buy RCN to supply processors, either against a back-to-back sale or on position. Their concern is that the lot is described accurately enough that it can be resold on the same description without a claim.

Integrated manufacturers who both shell and sell finished kernel buy RCN to control their own kernel supply rather than depend on the kernel market. For them the raw material decision is a hedge as much as a purchase.

What none of these buyers is doing is buying a finished food product. RCN is not sold for direct consumption; the shell and the CNSL make that impossible without processing. If you need edible product, you are looking for cashew kernels.

RCN is grown in West Africa, East Africa and Asia, and the origins do not trade interchangeably. This programme covers East African material, principally Tanzania with Mozambique as the second origin. Both are southern-hemisphere crops with broadly overlapping seasons, which makes them directly comparable inside one buying window.

Crop year matters as much as origin. Nuts held over from a previous crop are not automatically bad — properly stored RCN keeps — but they are a different proposition: moisture has usually been managed at least once, some deterioration is likely, and outturn tends to drift downward with time in store. A contract that names an origin but not a crop year has left the most important storage question open.

The practical rule is to specify both, and to specify how they will be evidenced. Origin is normally supported by the certificate of origin; crop year is a matter of the seller's declaration and the lot documentation behind it. If a buyer intends to rely on either, that reliance belongs in the contract rather than in the correspondence.

RCN moves in bags, most commonly jute or woven polypropylene, and the choice is not cosmetic. Jute breathes, which helps a nut that is still respiring and still equilibrating with the air around it; woven polypropylene is cheaper and stronger but traps moisture, which matters over a long transit. Which is appropriate depends on the moisture the cargo is packed at, the length of the voyage and the destination climate. This is covered in detail on RCN packaging.

Bagged cargo is normally stuffed loose into dry containers rather than palletised, which uses the cubic capacity of the box far better. What a container will hold is governed by the lowest of three limits — the volume of the box, the payload on the container plate and the road weight limit at destination — and that calculation is set out on RCN container loading.

Condensation is the principal transit risk. Warm cargo loaded at origin and carried into a cooler climate will sweat inside the container, and bagged nuts sitting under dripping condensate arrive stained and, in the worst case, mouldy. Managing this is a matter of loading at the right moisture, using dunnage and desiccants appropriately, and not sealing warm cargo into a cold box.