15 Questions That Expose Whether a Charcoal “Factory” Is Real
By Mohamad Sinno, Charcoal Expert · Last updated
Ask AI for an importer brief:
Most supplier questions can be answered from a website. These fifteen cannot — each has a right answer that only someone who has actually loaded a container of charcoal can give, and each is printed here beside the answer.
The fifteen questions, grouped
Read them in order on one call. Write the answers down as spoken and grade afterwards, not during — arguing in the moment tells the supplier which answers are being scored, and the second half of the call stops being evidence. Our own answers follow each group, because a page that demands disclosure and offers none is worth nothing. The call is one check among twelve, and the order to run them in is set out in how to verify an Indonesian charcoal factory before you pay.
Group A — Legal identity
| Ask | What a real answer contains |
|---|---|
| 1. “What is your NIB number, and which KBLI codes are registered on it?” | The number itself, and at least one KBLI code covering manufacturing rather than only trading. KBLI codes determine what a business is legally permitted to conduct under its NIB (ASEAN Briefing, 11 December 2025), so a supplier registered only for wholesale is not the producer, whatever the homepage says. |
| 2. “Is the address on the NIB the address of the production site?” | Either yes, stated plainly, or two addresses — a registered office and a plant — named separately without hedging. A city name on its own is not an answer to this question. |
| 3. “Which legal entity appears as shipper on the bill of lading?” | A company name that matches the registration, or a clear statement that a different entity exports on their behalf. Both are workable arrangements. Only the evasion is disqualifying. |
Ours. The legal entity is PT Coco Reina Global Charcoal. Our registered office is The Mansion Bougenville Fontana (Office Space Unit BF Lt. 10 No. K1), Jl. Trembesi Blok D, Pademangan Timur, Jakarta Utara 14410; we produce at KP. Wahiya RT.002 RW.004, Desa Gunung Sindur, Kec. Gunung Sindur, Bogor, Jawa Barat 16340, Indonesia, which is a separate address and the one to visit. No state document names the production site — that is what a visit or a video call is for. The identifiers we publish are our NIB, with the date it was issued, and our NPWP; they and the entity name can all be checked today, and all sit with everything else we hold on the documents we hold — one page, so there is one set of numbers to check rather than several copies to reconcile. That is the same standard this page asks buyers to apply, applied to us: the NIB was read off the certificate before it was published, and the tax number we used to show was not. The NPWP we show now was read off our own tax certificate.
Group B — Production reality
| Ask | What a real answer contains |
|---|---|
| 4. “How many days from purchase order to container ready? Give me the 20-foot figure and the 40-foot figure separately.” | Two different numbers, because the two loads take different lengths of time to build. A single figure covering both, or a range wide enough to cover any outcome, means the schedule is not theirs to give. Ask what the number excludes — packaging, quality control and vessel booking usually sit outside it. |
| 5. “What is the net weight of your master carton, and is it the same for every shape?” | One figure, given immediately, and a yes or no on shape. The carton is a fixed property of their packing line, not something that adapts to the buyer. “Depends what you need” is a trading answer to a production question. |
| 6. “Walk me through the weathering hold. How many days, and what material temperature do you record on packing day?” | A number of days before packing, and a measured temperature against a stated limit. A supplier who does not know what weathering is has never been asked for the certificate by a carrier, which means they have never moved this cargo by sea. |
| 7. “Who signs your weathering certificate?” | A named person who can attest how the cargo was packed — at the producer, or at whichever group entity prepares the document, which is worth establishing rather than assuming. If the answer is “the laboratory”, they have confused it with the self-heating test report — a different document, with a different signatory, proving a different thing. |
Ours. Production lead time is 15 working days for a 20-foot and 20 working days for a 40-foot, excluding packaging, quality control and vessel booking. The master carton is 10 kg net and the same for every shape. Weathering runs in two stages that do not overlap: at least 14 days curing the raw material before processing, then at least 14 days holding the finished briquettes before stuffing — at least 28 days from raw-material receipt to container. Material temperature is checked on each stuffing day and measures 20–30 °C against the 40 °C limit our SP 978 basis sets. A weathering statement travels with the dangerous-goods documents and we send a copy on request; the document itself is broken down in what a charcoal weathering certificate proves and how ours is issued.
Group C — Dangerous-goods literacy
| Ask | What a real answer contains |
|---|---|
| 8. “What UN number, class and packing group does your charcoal ship under?” | “UN 1361, Class 4.2, Packing Group III” — without pausing to look it up. This is the most diagnostic question on the page. A supplier who answers that the goods are not dangerous, or that they move as general cargo, is describing a shipment a compliant carrier would not have accepted. |
| 9. “On what basis is the packing group assigned — a test report, or the special-provision default?” | Either a self-heating test report they can produce, or the no-test route that assigns at least Packing Group III without testing. Both are legitimate; they are not the same thing, and a supplier who has shipped knows which one they rely on. Watch for a claimed “UN certificate” for the goods — no such document is issued. |
| 10. “What packaging code is on the master carton, and what does the classification line on your DG declaration say?” | A packaging code, and a classification line read off a real declaration rather than recited. The wording on a genuine declaration is stiff and repetitive in ways nobody invents. |
Ours. We declare and ship as UN 1361, Class 4.2, Packing Group III. The packing group is assigned on the special-provision no-test basis — at least Packing Group III without testing — and we hold no separate classification test report; we say so rather than let a report be assumed. Master cartons are 4G fibreboard boxes, and the classification block on a real Coco Reina dangerous goods declaration prints CARBON · Class: 4.2 · Label/Subrisk: 4.2/- · UN#: UN1361 · Packaging Group: III. The distinction question 9 turns on is set out in why UN 1361 is a classification and not a certificate, and the declaration fields themselves in the dangerous goods declaration, field by field.
Group D — Container arithmetic
| Ask | What a real answer contains |
|---|---|
| 11. “How many tonnes go into a 20-foot and into a 40-foot — and why is the second not double the first?” | Two figures that are not a multiple of two, and the reason. A 20-foot fills by volume before it reaches its weight limit; a 40-foot reaches its weight limit before it fills. A supplier who doubles the 20-foot number has never watched either container loaded. |
| 12. “Does the 20-foot payload change with briquette shape?” | Yes, and by roughly how much. Because the 20-foot is volume-limited, packing density moves the answer; because the 40-foot is weight-limited, it does not. One figure for every shape is the tell that follows directly from question 11. |
| 13. “Which port do you load from, and which lines take the booking?” | A named port consistent with the stated address, and named carriers. Charcoal is a declared dangerous good and not every line accepts it, so a supplier who has never had a booking refused has probably never made one. |
Ours. In a 20-foot: 20 t for 25 mm and 26 mm cube, 19.5 t for 27 mm and 28 mm cube, 18.5 t for hexagonal, stix, octagonal and flat/brix. In a 40-foot: 26.5 t for every shape, because the 40-foot reaches its weight cap regardless of how densely the cargo packs. The full breakdown, and the physical reason the two containers behave differently, is in how many tonnes of charcoal fit a container, by briquette shape. We load primarily from Jakarta (Tanjung Priok); Semarang is also used, with MSC. Which lines will and will not carry this cargo is covered in the shipping lines that accept charcoal as dangerous goods.
Group E — Commercial honesty
| Ask | What a real answer contains |
|---|---|
| 14. “Which incoterms do you actually offer — not which ones you could quote?” | A short list, and an account of who carries the dangerous-goods declarant burden under each. “Any incoterm you want” is not flexibility: under EXW the buyer declares the cargo and under CFR the seller does, and a supplier who has not thought about that has shipped under neither. |
| 15. “What is your minimum order, and what happens below it?” | A quantity, and a straight refusal below it. “No minimum” usually means consolidation — somebody else’s cargo travelling in the same container — which is a trading arrangement rather than a factory one, and changes who is accountable for the declaration. |
Ours. We quote EXW Factory, FOB Tanjung Priok and CFR; FOB Tanjung Priok is our price-list basis. Those three, and no others — naming a fourth would fail our own question 14. Under EXW the declarant burden sits with the buyer, which carries real cost, and it is better priced before a contract than discovered after one; what EXW, FOB and CIF actually shift for a charcoal shipment sets out where that burden lands. Our minimum order is one full container, 20-foot or 40-foot.
What evasion sounds like, and which failures are fatal
Evasion rarely arrives as a refusal. Across all five groups it takes four recurring shapes, and recognising the shape is faster than re-checking the fact.
- The redirect. The answer changes subject to quality or price. Questions 6, 9 and 11 attract this most, because they are the ones a middleman cannot reach without calling the producer.
- The mirror. The question comes back as a requirement — “what carton weight do you want?”, “what MOQ do you need?” A factory’s carton, lead time and payload exist before the buyer calls. A trader’s are assembled after.
- The document promise. A certificate is offered in place of a number. A number can be checked while the call is still running; a promised file arrives after the deposit.
- The upgrade. The answer is a larger claim than the question asked for — a packing-group question returns a certification list. Volume substituted for specificity is the oldest tell in this trade.
Three answers are fatal on their own, because none can be true of anyone who has exported this product: that the charcoal is not dangerous goods or travels as general cargo (question 8); a 40-foot payload that is exactly double the 20-foot (question 11); and no KBLI code covering manufacturing (question 1). Any one of them ends the conversation, regardless of the other fourteen.
Four common failures are not fatal and are regularly mistaken for it. Awkward English — the export desk and the production floor are different rooms, staffed differently. No ISO 9001 certificate — it certifies a management system, not a product, and its absence says nothing about whether a factory exists. A thin or dated website. And one wrong number out of fifteen, corrected when challenged: real operators misremember, and the pattern across the call carries far more information than any single miss.
Scoring what you heard
Grade from the written answers after the call, not from the impression the call left. The thresholds below are a decision rule, not a measurement — their purpose is to fix what happens next before the next conversation can move it.
- Any fatal answer. Stop. The remaining score is not informative.
- Twelve or more of fifteen, no fatal answer. Proceed to samples — to samples, not to a contract. The questions test whether they have shipped, not what they shipped.
- Eight to eleven. A second call with the production side on the line rather than the sales side. Most recoverable scores recover here, because the gap is usually who answered rather than what is true.
- Under eight. They may still be a legitimate trading company. That is a different decision made on different evidence, not a weaker version of this one.
Where this test is biased, which matters before the score is used. Groups C and D screen for export experience, not for production quality. A genuine small producer selling only into the Indonesian domestic market will fail most of both and still be an entirely real factory. A buyer purchasing EXW with their own forwarder and their own declarant should weight those two groups down and Groups A and B up. What the score measures is whether the person on the call has shipped what is being bought — usually the thing worth knowing, but not always the thing that was asked.
Common follow-up questions
Should I ask a charcoal supplier about their production capacity?
It is the weakest question in common circulation. Capacity cannot be verified from outside, it is the figure suppliers inflate most freely, and it does not answer what a buyer needs to know. Replace it with question 4: a lead time for a named container size is a commitment that can be measured against the date the container actually leaves. We publish no capacity figure ourselves, for the same reason we would not accept one.
Is ISO 9001 the certification to ask a charcoal factory for?
ISO 9001 certifies a management system, not the product, and it is not evidence that a factory exists. The more informative request is an accredited laboratory report carrying a report number and a date, showing ash, fixed carbon, moisture and volatile matter — those are the figures that decide whether a shipment matches the sample that won the order.
What if the supplier refuses a live video call?
A refusal is not automatically disqualifying, but what is offered instead is the whole answer. A scheduled call at a stated time, a walk through an area the buyer names rather than one the supplier chooses, or an independent inspector at the buyer’s cost are all workable substitutes. A refusal with no alternative attached is itself the answer.
Do these questions work on a trading company?
They identify one, which is not the same as rejecting one. A trader who says plainly that they are a trader, names the producer, and gets the dangerous-goods and container answers right from that producer is a workable counterparty, sometimes a better one than a small factory with no export desk. What this page screens for is a trader presenting as a factory, because every later answer inherits that first misstatement.
On the second question above: our own measured ranges for ash, fixed carbon, moisture and volatile matter, each attributed to its laboratory and report, are published on our quality and specification page. We make no certification claim anywhere on this site, because no certificate on file is yet backed by a proof document — listing one would be the practice this page warns against.
Ask us all fifteen
Every answer above is on the record and can be tested against the next one we give. The export desk answers Monday to Friday, 08:00–17:00 WIB (UTC+7). Mohamad Sinno, the owner, answers enquiries himself; English, Arabic, Russian, French and Italian are staffed. WhatsApp +62 821 3924 038, or start with a sample request and put the answers against the product. Contact routes and the full company record are on the contact page. If any answer here is wrong when checked, that is worth telling us.
This page is general guidance on supplier due diligence, not legal, dangerous-goods or investment advice. Registry procedures and dangerous-goods requirements change; confirm current rules with the relevant authority, your carrier or a licensed specialist before contracting.