A mill sells what it makes. A sourcing partner works on what you need. Below is what that difference is worth on a real order — and the cases where you should skip us and go straight to the mill.
You do not have an office in China. We are the office. On every order that means four jobs: choose the mill, agree the price and the specification, check the goods before they are loaded, and produce the documents the shipment needs.
None of those four jobs belongs to the mill. A mill's quality control reports on its own output, on its own forms. A mill's export desk handles the mill's own shipment. Somebody has to work for the buyer in that gap, and that is the role.
Most panel mills quote from a full container per specification, and many want a monthly volume on top of that. A buyer who needs one mixed container gets a polite refusal, or a price that includes the mill's inconvenience. Buying through a partner does not make the mill's MOQ disappear — it gets aggregated with other orders in the same production window.
A mill loads its own product only. If your project needs 18mm MDF, 12mm plywood and melamine faced board, buying direct means three containers, three freight bills, three sets of destination charges and three delivery dates. Mixed loading is a logistics job, not a production job.
Once the mill has been paid, its interest in your file drops to zero. A quality dispute across borders is slow, expensive and, for a one-container buyer, usually not worth pursuing — which the mill knows as well as you do. A buying office is paid for the work of preventing that situation, and its relationship with the mill depends on the mill not creating it.
| Buying direct from the mill | Buying through Dolphin DEC | |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum order | One full container per specification, often with a monthly volume | One container, mixed across mills and products |
| Mixed loading | Not offered — one mill, one product | Standard: several mills, several products, one B/L |
| Inspection | Mill QC, on the mill's own forms | Buyer-side inspection with photos, sent before the container is sealed |
| Documents | The mill prepares what the mill needs to export | CO, Form E, fumigation, phytosanitary and B/L prepared for your broker |
| Who answers when something goes wrong | The mill's export desk, in Chinese, on mill time | One contact who already knows your file |
We are a dedicated buying and export execution team with one accountable contact. We do not own a mill, a press line or a laboratory. We do not hold any certificate of our own — the certificates belong to the mills that produce the panels, and copies travel with the shipment.
This page exists partly because that is the opposite of what most supplier websites claim. A buyer who finds out at the audit stage that the "factory" was a trading office loses the order and the deposit. We would rather lose the enquiry.
If you need a manufacturer's letterhead for a tender, or a mill audited by your own team as the contracting party, we are not that. We will tell you so before you spend time.
This is not a disclaimer. If two or more of the following describe you, go to the mill directly — you will get a better price and you do not need us in the middle.
If none of those apply — two or three panel types, a container or two, no inspection capacity in China — that is the case this office is built for.
How we are paid: details on request. The arrangement is agreed per order, in writing, before you commit to anything. Ask on the first call and you get a straight answer, not a discovery on the invoice.
What we will not do: quote a price and then add a charge you were not told about. If a cost appears mid-order — a re-inspection, a document that has to be reissued — you hear about it before it is spent.
We are a buying office, which is a different job. A trading company buys goods and resells them, and the price you see includes its margin. A buying office works on your order from your specification: we run the mill comparison, inspect against your proforma invoice, and issue the commercial documents in our company's name as the exporter. Which mills we use stays on our side; the mill's own certificate travels with the shipment in the mill's name, because a certificate cannot be reissued under anyone else's.
How we are paid: details on request. See the section above.
One container, 20ft or 40ft. It can hold several products from several mills.
Non-conforming goods are not loaded. That is the sequence we control, and it is worth more than any promise made after the ship has sailed. If a fault appears after loading that the inspection should have caught, we take it up with the mill and report back to you with the evidence.
Specification, quantity, destination port. You get a straight answer on cost, timing and whether you are better off going direct.
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