Delivered the cargo and not been paid? Start here

Settlement agreements contractually enforceable internationally, the signed deal travelling where judgments struggle. A settlement is a passport holding hands with itself.

Negotiation language protected from later court use, candour's legal shield, the honest conversation's insurance. Without prejudice is where truth speaks freely.

By agreement of the parties, industry knowledge mattering more than robes, the mediator being a translator of positions. Choose someone who speaks cargo.

Quality, delay and payment files with ongoing relationships at stake, the cases where winning should not mean ending. Mediation is for people who must trade again.

Entirely, documents shared, sessions virtual, geography no longer an excuse, the table being a screen now. Dispute resolution discovered video like everyone else.

Mediation seeks agreement with a neutral facilitating, arbitration imposes a binding award after hearing both sides, speed and control versus finality. Mediation is a conversation with a referee, arbitration is a private court.

Yes, urgent interim arrangements, discharge, storage, resale, sit alongside the mediation, the process does not freeze the trade. Logistics and negotiation run in parallel lanes.

The file, documents, timeline, analysis, correspondence, plus a decision-maker in the room, because mediation fails on absent principals more than weak cases. Authority at the table is half the settlement.

Once drafted as a contract between the parties, yes, enforceable as contract law allows, the signed settlement being the judgment you wrote yourselves. It ends the argument by making it a deal.

Weeks rather than the seasons arbitration or court takes: the moment both sides share the file, the facts of a cargo dispute are usually narrow and the gaps close fast. What stretches mediation is the same thing that stretches everything, people not answering.

Usually the opposite: mediation exists precisely because both sides want to trade again next month, and a settlement they shaped themselves preserves what a verdict destroys. The relationship ends in court far more often than at a mediation table.

Yes. We are a member of GROFOR, the German association of wholesale traders in oils, fats and oil raw materials, founded in 1916 with around 150 member companies across Europe. GROFOR publishes its own standard trading conditions and runs an arbitration tribunal staffed by merchants as well as lawyers, and it sits inside the European umbrella body COCERAL with close ties to FOSFA, NOFOTA, FEDIOL and ECOGRAS. You can check the membership yourself in the GROFOR member directory. To be clear about what that does and does not mean: it says we trade in this sector under its conventions. It does not make us qualified in GROFOR, FOSFA or GAFTA rules, and we do not hold ourselves out as arbitrators or as legal advisers.

Two things today, in this order. Find the dispute clause in your contract and diary the deadline: under FOSFA terms an arbitrator must be appointed within 90 days of completion of discharge for quality and condition claims, and within 120 days of completion of the delivery period for monetary claims. Miss that and you can lose the right to claim at all. Then secure your evidence: the retained sealed samples from load, the sampling records, the full document pack and every message. After that, talk. Negotiating does not stop the clock, so do both.

Yes, and that is a large part of this work. We are brought in by sellers and by buyers on trades we had nothing to do with, precisely because we have no history with either side and no position in the cargo. Being unconnected to the original deal is an advantage here rather than an obstacle.

Neither, and it matters that you understand the difference. We are not lawyers and we do not issue binding rulings. We are commercial people who know what the cargo is worth, what the paperwork should say and what each side can realistically accept, and we use that to find a settlement both can sign. If your situation needs a lawyer or a formal arbitration we will tell you on the first call, and sometimes we do.

Sometimes, and sometimes the analysis genuinely disagrees for honest reasons: the material settled, water separated, the sample came from a different point, or the two laboratories ran different methods. You cannot tell which from the argument itself. What tells you is the retained sealed samples from load, tested by a laboratory both sides accepted in advance. That is usually the first thing we arrange, and it very often ends the dispute on its own.

Far less, and the bigger saving is time. Formal proceedings run for months while demurrage accrues and the cargo deteriorates. Note also that under GAFTA terms you normally cannot recover your legal costs even if you win, while FOSFA does allow recovery, so read your contract before assuming a win pays for itself. A commercial settlement reached in two weeks usually beats a ruling in eight months even when the ruling would have gone your way.

Our technical judgement is strongest there: we can tell you what a chlorine figure or an FFA result means for the value of a parcel. But the mechanics of a stalled cargo are the same across physical commodities, and where the dispute is commercial rather than technical we can help outside our own products. If it needs specialist knowledge we do not have, we will say so rather than learn on your cargo.

Yes, and that is the point of using an intermediary. Nothing said in the process goes anywhere else, which is what lets each side say what they would actually accept without conceding it on the record. We are a broker: discretion on both sides of a trade is how we have always worked.