Contracts

International trade in coffee would not be possible without general agreement on the basic conditions of sale. Otherwise it would endlessly be necessary to repeat each and every contract stipulation for a proposed transaction, essentially very time consuming and open to mistakes. To avoid this the coffee trade has developed standard forms of contract of which the most frequently used are those issued by the European Coffee Federation (ECF - www.ecf-coffee.org) in the Netherlands and the Green Coffee Association (GCA - www.greencoffeeassociation.org) in the United States. Although many individual transaction details must be still agreed before a contract is concluded, the basic conditions of sale, unchanging conditions that apply time and time again, can be covered simply and easily by stipulating the applicable standard form of contract. Even so, an offer to sell (or a bid to buy) must stipulate the quality, quantity and price, the shipment period, the conditions of sale, the period during which the offer or bid is firm (valid), and so on.

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