The short version
Start with the application, not the rate
Most first enquiries we get open with the same four words: what is your rate. It is the wrong question to lead with, and not because we are being difficult about it. A rate with no grade attached cannot be compared to anything. Premium select green and grade B green are both green raisins, both seedless, both grown and dried within twenty kilometres of each other. The gap between those two rates is wider than the gap between black and green.
So the first decision is not price. It is what the fruit has to do inside your product.
A mithai unit folding raisins into laddoo wants sweetness and a soft bite, and nobody is inspecting individual pieces once the sweet is rolled. A dry fruit counter selling 250g pouches at a gift price wants even colour and even length, because the customer is looking straight at the pack. A bakery wants fruit that comes out of a 180C oven still looking like fruit. Three buyers, three answers, three different rates, and only one of them is the expensive one.
Work out which of those you are before you send the enquiry. If you are not sure, tell us the product you are making and the finished appearance you need, and we will suggest a band rather than push the top of the grade ladder we actually stock.
The seven steps to buy raisins in bulk
This is the sequence we run with new buyers, and it has not changed much in years. Skip step two and you will find out what you bought after the money has moved.
What a usable quotation contains
If you are running a comparison across three raisin suppliers, send all three the same eight lines and ask them to answer in the same order. Half of them will come back with a rate and nothing else. That tells you something on its own.
The eight lines every bulk raisin quotation should carry
Freight, transit and where the risk sits
We quote ex-Tasgaon. That means the rate covers the goods graded, packed and ready at our end, and freight is a separate line because it depends entirely on where you are, how much you are taking and whether it moves by courier or by transport lorry.
Buyers sometimes read a delivered rate from one supplier against an ex-godown rate from another and conclude the first is expensive. Put both on the same basis before you decide anything. On a 15kg opening order, freight to a South Indian city can be a meaningful share of the landed cost. On five quintals it barely registers per kilo, which is one of the reasons rate per kg improves with quantity even before any discount is discussed.
Raisins travel well when they leave dry. Heat in a closed lorry is survivable. Moisture is not. A carton that sat on a wet platform for a night in July will arrive clumped, and that is a transit failure rather than a quality failure, though it will look identical to you on arrival. Keeping the two apart is exactly why we batch mark cartons and why you should photograph anything that looks wrong before you unpack the stack.
Payment and the paperwork that travels with the goods
Payment terms are agreed at quotation stage, in writing, and they are part of the price. A rate offered against advance and the same rate offered against thirty days are not the same offer. In this trade a first order normally moves against advance or part advance with the balance before dispatch. Credit terms, where they exist at all, follow a buying history rather than an introduction.
Every dispatch carries a GST invoice showing HSN, variety, grade, quantity, rate and packing, with freight shown separately where we have arranged it. Cartons carry batch marking traceable back to a lot and its packing date. Where your QA team wants a grade sheet travelling with the consignment, ask at quotation stage and it goes in the file.
The classification side of that invoice, including which HSN heading dried grapes sit under, is covered on raisins, HSN and GST.
The supply chain of raisins in India, and where you enter it
Nearly all of India's raisins are made in one window, February to April, in a belt centred on Sangli district. Grapes go onto racks, take twelve to sixteen days to come down as raisins, and roughly four kilos of grapes yield one kilo of fruit. After April there is no more production for eleven months. Everything traded from May onward is stock.
That single fact shapes the whole chain. Cold storage is not a nicety in this trade, it is the mechanism by which October gets any raisins at all. Understanding why rates move the way they do through the year is mostly understanding drawdown from those stores.
The chain below is the ordinary route. Every additional hand between the drying shed and your floor adds a margin, and more importantly adds a chance for two lots to be mixed. Mixed lots are the origin of most consistency complaints we hear about other suppliers.
The route a raisin takes from vineyard to your production floor
How to judge raisin suppliers
Anyone can list raisins. The trade is full of intermediaries who have never stood in a drying shed and are simply forwarding your enquiry to somebody who has. That is not automatically bad, but it does mean the person quoting you may not be able to answer a question about moisture without making a phone call first.
Ask three questions on the first call and listen to how fast the answers come. Which grades can you supply consistently through the year. What is in cold storage right now. What will you not supply. A supplier who tells you plainly that they cannot serve certified organic, or cannot hold jumbo golden in June, is more useful than one who agrees to everything and substitutes later.
We say the same thing about ourselves on the wholesale desk page: we quote grades we can actually hold, and we would rather lose an order than ship a grade drift.
What actually goes wrong
Four failures account for nearly every bulk raisin complaint we have seen or been on the receiving end of.
Grade drift is the commonest. The first consignment is beautiful, the third is a size band smaller, and nothing was ever written down so there is no argument to have. Fix it by buying against numbers rather than a grade name.
Moisture is the second. A lot packed slightly wet looks fine on day one and clumps by week four in your godown. It is not always the supplier's fault, and it is not always yours, which is why packing date and batch marking matter more than either party thinks at the time. What to do at your end is in warehouse storage and realistic shelf life.
Third, the comparison error: a delivered rate weighed against an ex-godown rate. Fourth, and the one that costs the most, buying spot in October. Sweet units and bakeries that fix grade and supplier in May consistently buy better than the ones ringing round in the middle of the festive rush, when everyone is short and nobody is negotiating.
Buying through the year
Fresh lots enter the market from February, and that is when rates are softest. From May the market is trading a known quantity, so the direction of travel is generally firmer as the year goes on, with the sharpest climb from September into the festive months.
Buyers with warehouse space and predictable monthly consumption usually do better committing early in the season. Buyers without storage should at least fix the grade and the supplier early, so that price is the only thing left to negotiate at reorder. That is a smaller conversation and a faster one.
If you are buying under 15kg, this desk is the wrong door. Sealed 250g, 500g and 1kg packs with printed packing dates, listed with their rates, are on our retail price page.
Frequently asked
15kg. Below that the economics stop working in your favour: sealed retail packs are cheaper per kilo once you account for handling, and they come dated and nitrogen flushed. Above 15kg we quote ex-Tasgaon per kilogram against a named grade, in 5kg to 25kg cartons.