What is an advice of shipment?

Once your green coffee has been loaded onto a vessel at origin, the seller sends you an advice of shipment - a formal notification confirming the coffee is on its way. It includes the vessel name, bill of lading reference, port of loading, number of bags and total weight, and the estimated arrival date.

In most green coffee contracts, sending this notification within a set number of days of loading is a contractual obligation, not just a courtesy. It gives you everything you need to arrange insurance, line up customs documentation, and plan your warehouse intake.

If you're buying from an importer who handles logistics end-to-end, you may never see a formal advice of shipment - they absorb it into their own tracking. But when you're buying closer to origin or working directly with exporters, you'll encounter it regularly, and knowing what to do with it when it arrives matters.