Commodity Trading Editing and Proofreading Services

Commodity trading is one of the few parts of finance where the documents describe something physical, and that changes everything about how they must be written. A cargo has a moisture content, a sulphur level, a loading window and a vessel; a disagreement about any of them is settled by the contract, the inspection certificate and the correspondence between the parties. Millions can turn on whether a clause said "about" or gave a tolerance, and on whether an email sent at the load port constituted a notice or merely a conversation.

We edit what trading houses, producers and their counterparties produce — physical sale and purchase contracts, general terms and conditions, trade confirmations and recap emails, quality and quantity specifications, inspection and certificate requirements, shipping and charterparty documentation, letters of credit and documentary instructions, laytime and demurrage claims and responses, force majeure and non-performance notices, hedging and derivative documentation, credit and counterparty assessments, compliance and sanctions procedures for trade flows, and market commentary and research. Our editors check that specifications, tolerances and incoterms are expressed consistently across the contract, the confirmation and the shipping documents, since divergence between those three is where most disputes begin.

The quality and quantity clause is the provision most worth getting right, because it is the one the buyer will test on arrival and the one that determines whether a cargo can be rejected or merely discounted. Weak drafting shows up as a specification with no stated method of analysis, a tolerance expressed as "approximately" rather than a percentage, no named independent inspector, and no clarity on whether the load port or discharge port certificate is final and binding. We write these clauses so each parameter has its test method, its typical and rejection limits, and its consequence — price adjustment on a stated scale, or an outright right to reject; so the sampling point and the inspection appointment are unambiguous; and so the time within which a claim must be made is stated with the evidence required. The cost of tightening this clause is an hour; the cost of leaving it loose is a dispute in which both parties genuinely believe they are right.

Everything you send is treated in strict confidence, including live contracts, positions and counterparty correspondence. We are editors rather than lawyers or brokers, and nothing we provide is legal or trading advice — your counsel must approve contractual terms. What we can do is make the documents internally consistent and unambiguous, and we work often with traders and operators writing in English as an additional language.