How much shelf life actually arrives
Shelf life is set by the production date, not the expiry date. Contracting the wrong one is why perfectly in-date goods are refused at the border.
A buyer agrees a twenty-four-month shelf life and feels covered. The goods arrive with eleven months left, because they were produced before the order was placed and sat at origin. Nothing was misrepresented. The wrong number was contracted.
Contract the production date
The expiry date tells you when the product becomes unsaleable. The production date tells you how much of its life you are actually buying. Only one of them is under anyone's control at the point of order.
So the production date goes into the contract, together with a minimum remaining life at discharge — expressed as a share of total life, not as a number of months, so it survives products with different total lives.
In the Gulf this is a customs question, not a commercial one
Several Gulf markets apply a remaining-shelf-life rule at entry: a consignment arriving with less than a set proportion of its life remaining is refused, even though the product is comfortably in date and perfectly safe.
Refusal on this ground is not negotiable at the border. It is prevented at the order, or it is not prevented.
Printed, not stickered
The same markets generally require the production and expiry dates to be printed by the manufacturer on the original pack, rather than applied afterwards as a sticker. A stickered date is a reason for refusal in its own right, independently of what the date says.
This has to be instructed before the run, because it is a line setting, not a packing-room decision.
The calendar decides more than the factory does
Production dates have to be planned against the sailing schedule and against fixed points that move every lead time in the trade: the pack season for anything harvested, Chinese New Year factory closures and the freight spike that precedes them, Ramadan stock that has to land months ahead, European summer shutdowns.
A production date promised without reference to those is a guess.
What to do about it.
- Put the production date in the order, not only the expiry date.
- Specify minimum remaining life at discharge as a share of total life.
- Confirm the date format your destination's customs accepts.
- Instruct printed-not-stickered dates before the run is scheduled.
- Check the destination's remaining-life rule before agreeing a sailing.
- Plan the production date around the pack season and the known shutdowns.
Ask what the production date will be. If the answer is the expiry date, the conversation has not started yet.