Zhongtian Petrochemical export team. Published 10 October 2026. Terms as published on this site; confirm them on your quotation.
Our standard minimum order is 20 packaging units, and a trial order below it is negotiable. What moves a lubricant factory’s minimum is not a discount request but a change in what the order costs to make and ship: a stock grade instead of a custom blend, a pallet that is full, a container under its rated load. Of the 884 enquiries that came through our website forms between June 2023 and September 2026, 33, or 3.7 percent, asked about the minimum order quantity in their first message. This page is how to negotiate lower MOQ with us, written from our side of the table: which of those requests we can move, which we cannot, and what to write so the first reply is a priced one.
What our MOQ is, in units that mean something
“20 units” means 20 packaging units, and the pack size you choose decides how much oil that is. The same minimum is 20 litres in one-litre bottles and 4,000 litres by nominal drum size, a factor of 200 (a 200 L drum is filled by weight, about 170 kg of oil). Every quote we send states the unit, and we ask buyers to confirm it in writing, because the ambiguity sits on the supplier’s side of the table as much as the buyer’s.
| Pack size | 20 units is | Who usually orders it |
|---|---|---|
| 1 L bottle (or 1 US quart, 19 L in total) | 20 L | Retail trial, sample packs for a distributor’s shelf |
| 4 L (or 1 US gallon, 76 L in total) | 80 L | Workshop trial, small fleet |
| 18 L pail (or 5 US gallon, 378 L in total) | 360 L | Plant maintenance trial; grease by the 15 kg pail |
| 200 L drum | 20 drums: about 3,400 kg net of oil at 170 kg per drum, or 3,400 to 3,600 kg of grease by the 170 or 180 kg drum | Fleet or plant supply; the pallet and container tiers below |
Catalogue grades are packed in 1 L, 1 quart, 4 L, 1 gallon, 18 L, 5 gallon and 200 L. Lead time is 3 to 7 days for stock grades, 10 to 20 days for a grade not in stock depending on quantity, and small, urgent orders can be run on a 15-day expedited schedule; those are the terms in our sourcing guide, where the MOQ is one line in a six-step framework. A sample under 1 kg is free with the buyer paying freight, as stated on our product pages.
Which grades are stock grades
Every grade whose product page carries a typical-values table is made to stock; anything else is blended to order. The L-CKC industrial gear oil page is one example of that table; a grade page without one means ask. That rule is the whole logic of the tiers below. A lubricant is made by the batch: base oil and additives metered into a kettle and blended for one to three hours per batch in a typical plant, as one blending-plant supplier describes the process, or, for grease, cooked in a reactor and finished in a second kettle, where the plant’s batch sizes are a design input the engineering firm asks for before it sizes the vessels, in ABB’s description of grease plants. A stock grade has already been made, so a small quantity costs little to pick; a custom grade has to be run, and a kettle cannot run below its minimum working volume and still meet the specification on the certificate. We are not publishing our kettle sizes or line-cleaning times here. The point is that a request that moves an order from “run a batch for me” to “ship from a batch you already made” moves the minimum, and a request to run a smaller batch does not.
How to negotiate lower MOQ with us: what moves
| Request | Our answer | Condition |
|---|---|---|
| A trial order below 20 units | Yes | Stock grade; pack from the catalogue list; quoted at the trial quantity, with freight quoted separately |
| Mixed pack sizes in one order | Yes | Quoted line by line on the pack list |
| Several grades in one container | Yes | Quoted line by line on the pack list; our El Salvador order carried nine products in one box |
| Private label or OEM on a small run | Yes | Custom packaging quoted separately; a new formulation is quoted at its batch minimum |
| Buying from a stocked lot in-market | Yes, by the pail or drum | Only where we hold stock; see the Colombian lot below |
What we cannot move
A custom formulation below one batch. If the grade does not exist, it has to be cooked or blended, and the batch minimum applies. The answer there is to trial the nearest stock grade first, and to order the custom grade at its batch minimum only after the trial.
A container loaded past its plate. The door plate on the 40 ft high-cube we loaded for El Salvador in September 2026 reads a maximum gross mass of 32,500 kg, a tare of 3,300 kg and a net rating of 29,200 kg, with 76.4 cubic metres inside. Spread over the 130 drums on that order, the rating allows about 225 kg per drum, pallets included; the packing-list gross weight set against that figure is what tells you whether a drum count fits, and the road limit at the destination port may be lower still. Published carrier figures for the same container type give a payload of 28,600 kg and 76.3 cubic metres, in Hapag-Lloyd’s equipment example as quoted by iContainers, close to our plate but not identical, so the plate of the box you are allocated is the number to plan with.
Documents. A smaller order does not come with fewer papers. The technical data sheet, the safety data sheet and the batch certificate of analysis are issued by grade and batch on request, for a trial as much as for a container; ask for them before paying.
The ladder from sample to container
| Tier | Size | What it is for | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sample | under 1 kg, free, freight on buyer | Lab check, compatibility test | Grades whose product page carries the sample note |
| Trial | below 20 units, negotiable | First fill of one machine or one fleet | A buyer asked for five 15 kg pails to test a grease on vessel deck equipment |
| Minimum | 20 packaging units | First commercial order | 20 drums of a stock grade, as a worked case |
| Pallet | 4 drums stretch-wrapped | The unit a pallet truck moves | Drums are wrapped four to a pallet on our container loads |
| Stocked lot in-market | pails and drums held locally | Buyers who cannot wait for ocean freight | 150 pails of 18 L and 10 drums of 200 L of L-HM 32 held in Colombia |
| Container | 40 ft high-cube | Annual or quarterly supply | 130 drums, nine products, to El Salvador |
The ladder has one rung most buyers skip and should not: the trial. The 33 enquiries that asked about the minimum order are consistent in what they want: price, minimum order and shipping options for one 208-litre drum to a Central American port; wholesale prices and the minimum order across 1 L, 4 L, 5 L and 20 L packs for West Africa; the minimum order on 500 g, 1 kg, 5 kg and 15 kg grease packs; procurement process, minimum quantities and lead times for lithium grease in bulk to South Asia. Each of them gets a priced reply faster when the pack size and the destination are in the first message. Grease in particular is worth trialling before a drum order, because an opened pail has a shorter life than a sealed one, as grease shelf life explains.
What to put in the email
A request we can price in one reply contains six things.
- The grade, by its specification rather than a brand to match: the viscosity grade or NLGI grade, the standard it must meet, and any approval the equipment manual names.
- The pack size, from the catalogue list, and whether a mix of sizes is acceptable.
- The quantity for the first order and an honest estimate for the year. An estimate is not a commitment; say which it is.
- The delivery city or port and the trade term you want, named from the Incoterms 2020 rules; the rule decides who arranges and pays carriage, whether the seller must insure (only under CIF and CIP), and where risk passes, and the rules list every cost item at articles A9 and B9, so naming the rule removes most of the back-and-forth.
- The documents you need with the goods: technical data sheet, safety data sheet in your language, certificate of analysis by batch.
- What you would do after a successful trial: the next pack size and quantity. That line turns a trial request into a priced ladder.
Before paying any supplier, verify its system certificates by number; ours, with the registration numbers and the certifying body, are listed in step 3 of the sourcing guide.
Frequently asked questions
What is considered a low moq?
For lubricants, 20 packaging units is the minimum a manufacturer can run from stock, and 20 litres in bottles meets it, although at that size freight usually costs more than the oil. Below the minimum is a trial, not an MOQ. A custom blend cannot be ordered in trial quantities, because it has to be made as a batch.
How to professionally ask for a lower price?
Separate price from minimum. Give the grade, the pack, the first-order quantity, the annual estimate and the destination, then ask for the price at each quantity break rather than for a discount on one quantity. A supplier can show the breaks in one reply; a request for “your best price” gets a guess.
What are the four golden rules of negotiation?
We can only speak for the rules that work on us: find out what drives the number before arguing with it; ask for the breakdown by batch, pack and freight; offer something that changes the factory’s cost, such as a stock grade, fewer pack sizes or a scheduled annual quantity; and put the agreed tiers in writing, including the unit the minimum is counted in.
How do I ask my supplier to reduce the price?
Ask what would make the price lower from the supplier’s side: a larger pack, a full pallet, a container that is full on weight, a stock grade instead of a custom one, or a scheduled annual quantity. Each of those lowers the supplier’s cost, and a supplier can pass on a cost it does not incur.
Send the pack size, the grade and the city
That is enough for one reply that prices the trial and the next tier up. If the grade is a custom blend, say so, and we will quote it at its batch minimum and name the stock grade to trial first.