Industrial salt from India is mainly solar salt, made by evaporating seawater or brine in shallow pans, and Kutch in Gujarat is one of its best-known sources. When you look for an industrial salt exporter, remember that the company selling and shipping the salt is often not the one that makes it. Ask for the salt works behind the lot.
Most Kutch salt manufacturers harvest in the dry season, so stock, quality and availability follow the season. Plan orders around that.
Who produces and who exports?
Salt works produce the salt. Exporters, many of them based around Gandhidham and the Kandla and Mundra port area, buy, wash, grade, store and load it. Some do both. For a Gandhidham salt exporter, the useful question is whether it owns or controls the pans, the washing plant and the storage, or only arranges the shipment. Why Kutch produces salt explains the geography.
A pure trader can still be a fine supplier for a first small order. The risk is that it cannot tell you which pan the lot came from, so the grade can change between shipments.
How is industrial salt graded?
Industrial salt is sold on the sodium chloride content, moisture, insoluble matter and the levels of calcium, magnesium and sulphate. Which limits matter depends on use. Chlor-alkali plants are sensitive to calcium and magnesium, water-softening salt needs low insolubles, and de-icing salt is bought mainly on bulk and cost. Salt grades: industrial, edible and de-icing separates them, and industrial salt purity explains the figures to ask for.
What should be in the specification?
- Sodium chloride content on a dry basis, with the test method.
- Moisture at loading, since salt takes up water and moisture affects what you pay per tonne of real salt.
- Water-insoluble matter, calcium, magnesium and sulphate.
- Particle size, for example crushed, fine or coarse, and the screen sizes used.
- Washed or unwashed, because washing removes surface impurities.
How is it packed and shipped?
Salt moves in bulk vessels, in containers as bagged or jumbo-bag cargo, or loose in lined containers. Large users buy bulk, and smaller buyers take bags. How salt is shipped compares them. Check moisture and purity at the time of loading, not only on the sample, using the method in checking moisture and purity at loading.
How do you compare offers fairly?
Compare offers on the same basis. Salt is sold by weight, but the moisture and the real sodium chloride content differ between offers, so a lower figure for wet salt can end up costing more per tonne of salt delivered. Ask each supplier to state sodium chloride on a dry basis and moisture at loading, the packing, the loading port and the Incoterm. Add the cost of the specific test at loading. A written specification with agreed limits, and a right to reject, gives you a basis for the comparison and for any later claim.
Next step
We find the salt works behind the lot, check samples and certificates, have the cargo tested and supervise loading. We work only for the buyer, for one written fee agreed in advance. Book a free sourcing review, or see what we source in chemicals.