Here's something that doesn't happen every week. Our Shanghai distributor - we've been shipping IV120 to them for about a year - emailed Tuesday asking if they could bring a European partner by the plant the next day. Sure, we said. Didn't ask too many questions.
Turns out the "partner" was a sourcing manager from a surfactants company in Barcelona. The Shanghai crew has been supplying the Spanish outfit with fatty acid for the Chinese market, and now the Spanish side wanted to source TOFA directly from a Chinese producer. The Shanghai team was essentially introducing us. Decent of them.
So we had two buyers on the same tour, asking completely different questions, in the same meeting room. Interesting exercise.
The Shanghai side we know. They asked the usual - lead time on the next 30-ton IV120 order, whether we could hold price through Q3, the standard stuff. They've been getting 18-day lead times from us consistently, which is why they're still buying from us and not the Shandong supplier they used before.
The Spanish visitor was a different animal. Flew in from Barcelona via Beijing, looked a little jet-lagged but switched on. He didn't care much about price (within reason). He cared about consistency - same IV batch to batch, same rosin content, same color. His European TOFA supply has been spotty since the Swedish rosin shortage last year, and he wanted a backup source.
We walked both of them through the distillation line. The Shanghai buyer has seen it before; he was mostly there to vouch for us. The Spanish guy spent twenty minutes on the rosin separation column alone, asking about the stripping steam rate and how we handle crude tall oil when the soap content spikes. Good questions, the kind you can't rehearse answers for.
We showed them six months of QC reports. IV120 running 118–122 g I₂/100g, IV160 within spec, rosin content on the TOFA below 2%. Both pulled their own samples - always a good sign, means they're actually going to test.
What I noticed: the Shanghai buyer kept explaining things to the Spanish visitor in a mix of English and Mandarin. "They run a tight ship here" - I heard him say that twice. I'm not sure if that's a compliment or just a fact, but I'll take it.
Lunch was in the cafeteria. The Spanish visitor seemed genuinely interested in the dumplings. We talked about ocean freight, US tariffs, European chemical regulations, and whether the dollar-yuan rate was going to hold through the summer. Practical stuff, not the usual sales pitch conversation.
By late afternoon the Spanish visitor had 5kg each of TOFA IV160 and IV180, plus our rosin specs. He said he'd run plant trials when he got back. The Shanghai side confirmed their next 30-ton IV120 order - same spec, same lead time.
Two orders out of one visit. Not bad for a Wednesday.
Here's what I took away: distributors who bring their own customers to your plant are doing you a real favor. They're putting their reputation on the line. We need to make sure we don't make them regret it.
Anyway. Good day. The Spanish trial should convert - I'll know in a month.
