Export & Buyer Resources (FAQ)
Welcome to the Khmer Ceramics portal for global buyers. Review our wholesale stoneware FAQ, shipping logistics, and international export resources below.
Export Orders & Pricing
Q: What is your Minimum Order Quantity (MOQ) for export?
- A: As a high-volume manufacturer, our export logistics are optimized for pallet and container shipping. Our absolute minimum for international B2B export is 1 Pallet (LCL). For the best economic value, we highly recommend orders of a 20ft or 40ft Full Container (FCL). If you require less than a pallet, please purchase directly through our retail online shop.
Q: Do you offer dropshipping or consignment partnerships?
- A: No. We are a direct manufacturing facility, not a fulfillment warehouse. We do not offer dropshipping to individual retail customers, nor do we operate on consignment (payment after sale). All wholesale orders are manufactured to order under standard factory payment terms.
Q: How do I access your B2B pricing and catalog?
- A: Please contact us via our Wholesale Contact Form using your official company email address (we do not approve access for generic @gmail.com or @hotmail.com addresses). Because our 2026 production capacity is strictly capped to ensure quality during the global energy transition, we are currently prioritizing established hospitality distributors and hotel groups.
Q: Does the global energy crisis affect your 2026 pricing?
- A: Due to the extreme volatility in global LPG and natural gas markets, we have adapted our pricing structure to offer our B2B partners maximum transparency and security. We do not apply energy surcharges. Instead, our pricing operates under the following strict guidelines:
• 7-Day Quotation Validity: To navigate daily energy fluctuations, all official wholesale quotations are strictly valid for 7 days.
• The 100% Upfront Guarantee: Clients who pay 100% at the time of order lock in their exact quoted price. We immediately use these funds to pre-purchase and stock the physical energy required for your production run. This guarantees your kiln space, ensures on-time delivery, and guarantees absolutely zero pricing surprises.
• Split Deposit Payments: For clients opting to pay a standard deposit (with the balance due before shipping), we offer flexibility. However, the final invoice balance will be subject to a proportional adjustment only if our local energy procurement costs increase by more than 10% during your production window.
• Mid-Term Price Relief: We believe in long-term partnerships. We are currently developing our own sustainable biomass and natural gas infrastructure to achieve total energy independence. We are building this to secure your supply chain and lower costs, not to increase our margins. Once our facility is fully operational, the resulting reduction in our energy costs will be passed directly back to our customers.
Shipping, Customs & Duties
Q: How do you ship samples and small retail orders (DHL)?
- A: We successfully ship our 1300°C high-fired stoneware worldwide every day, from individual art pieces to full 40-foot shipping containers. All items are packed in premium 5-ply reinforced cardboard, ensuring a near-zero breakage rate.
⚠️ Important Note for Small Retail Orders (Air Freight):
Because true high-fired stoneware is incredibly dense and heavy, shipping small retail quantities (e.g., a set of 6 plates) requires international express air freight via DHL. Please be aware that air freight from Cambodia can often be 3 to 5 times the price of the ceramics themselves. We gladly fulfill these retail orders for clients who fall in love with our unique pieces, but we want to be fully transparent about international air transit costs before you proceed to checkout.
Q: What is the best shipping method for mid-sized wholesale orders (LCL)?
- A: We successfully ship our 1300°C high-fired stoneware worldwide every day, from individual art pieces to full 40-foot shipping containers. All items are packed in premium 5-ply reinforced cardboard, ensuring a near-zero breakage rate.
📦 For B2B & Wholesale Orders (Sea Freight):
The true value of our factory unlocks at volume. For orders of 1 pallet (LCL) or full containers (FCL), we utilize sea freight. At this volume, the shipping cost per plate drops down to pennies, making our ceramics highly competitive on the global market.
Helpful Shipping Resources:
Please choose the guide that best fits your order size:
– Retail Delivery & Return Policy
– B2B / Wholesale Shipping Logistics
– B2B Estimated Landed Cost Cheat Sheet
Still have questions about importing or logistics? Contact our export team directly at hello[at]khmerceramics.com, and we will be happy to assist you.
Q: How do you handle high-volume distributor contracts (FCL)?
- A: For large hospitality projects and distributor contracts, FCL (Full Container Load) is the most economical and secure logistics choice. Your freight travels port-to-port in a dedicated container, minimizing handling and maximizing margin.
⚠️ The “Stoneware Weight” Rule (Maximum 20 Tons):
Because our ceramics are high-density stoneware, containers will often hit maximum weight limits before they run out of physical space.
- 20-Foot Container: Ideal for dense, flat items (Plates). A 20ft container filled entirely with plates will reach the 20-Ton legal limit before the container is visually full.
- 40-Foot Container: Ideal for hollow items (Mugs, Jugs, and Deep Bowls). A 40ft container allows you to maximize volume without exceeding the 20-Ton legal weight limit.
• Our logistics team will assist you in perfectly balancing your FCL order for maximum freight efficiency.
Q: What exactly is included in your wholesale shipping quotes?
- A: To simplify international procurement for our B2B partners, Khmer Ceramics quotes sea freight volume under CIF (Cost, Insurance, and Freight) Incoterms to your named port of destination (FOB available on request).
What Khmer Ceramics pays and manages:
• Export packing at our Siem Reap facility.
• Trucking to the dry port in Phnom Penh.
• Cambodian export permits, customs clearance, and CAM Control.
• THC (Terminal Handling Charges) and CFS (Container Freight Station) in Cambodia.
• Bill of Lading and Carriage of goods to your destination port.
• Freight Insurance.
What the Buyer manages (via your local customs broker):
• Unloading at your destination port.
• Import customs clearance.
• Local Import Duties and VAT (Note: Imports to the EU, UK, and AUS from Cambodia benefit from 0% Import Duty).
• Final trucking from the destination port to your warehouse.
Q: How does the 0% Import Duty advantage work?
- A: Manufacturing in Cambodia provides our clients with a massive financial advantage over importing from China. Because Cambodia holds “Least Developed Country” (LDC) status, our ceramics (HS Code 6912.00) are eligible for 0% Import Duty when entering the European Union (under the EBA scheme), the United Kingdom (under the DCTS scheme), and Australia. This instantly saves our buyers 15% to 30% in landed taxes.
Manufacturing, Quality & Safety
Q: Are your ceramics food-safe and lead-free?
- A: Yes, 100%. We use absolutely zero lead, zero cadmium, and zero boron in our facility. Because we fire our stoneware at 1300°C (2400°F), any volatile impurities are entirely eradicated. Our raw materials meet the strictest global food-contact safety standards. We can provide Bureau Veritas certification or specific leachable testing reports upon request for large contracts.
Q: What makes your stoneware "Commercial-Grade"?
- A: Firing at 1300°C creates complete vitrification (water absorption < 0.5%). This means the ceramic body turns glass-like, making it completely non-porous, naturally hygienic, and highly resistant to edge-chipping. Our plates are engineered to survive the brutal environment of commercial restaurant dishwashers.
Q: What does "Industrial Handmade" mean?
- A: We believe that commercial tableware should never lose its character to a sterile, automated assembly line. While much of the global industry focuses on producing perfectly identical, highly stackable porcelain, our philosophy is entirely different. Khmer Ceramics engineers for soul, exception, and disruption.
We use industrial machinery (RAM presses, jiggers, molds, …) primarily to achieve the high-volume capacity and structural integrity required by the hospitality sector. These machines provide us with a highly durable canvas. The finishing, carving, and application of our 1300°C reactive glazes are done entirely by human hands. This process intentionally steps away from absolute, rigid uniformity in favor of organic beauty, ensuring every single piece retains the unique (wabi Sabi), perfectly imperfect soul of authentic studio pottery, scaled to industrial volumes.
Custom Orders & Private Label
Q: Can you manufacture custom shapes for our brand?
- A: Yes, we offer OEM/Private Label manufacturing.
However, engineering new jigger molds and calibrating kiln shrinkage for custom shapes requires extensive R&D. Custom shapes require a strict high-volume MOQ and an upfront tooling/mold fee.
Q: Can we apply our own brand logo to the bottom of the plates?
- A: Yes. For volume wholesale orders, we can apply your custom brand logo (backstamp) to the unglazed foot of the ceramics.
Q: Can we create a custom glaze color?
- A: Developing a brand-new 1300°C high-fire reactive glaze from absolute scratch is a highly complex thermal and artisanal process. However, with Khmer Ceramics, you likely will not need to.
Over the past 20 years, our R&D team has engineered a massive proprietary “Color Vault” of over 500 ready-to-fire glaze recipes and tonal variations (projected to expand to over 800 tones end 2026).
Beyond our famous signature finishes—like Black Crawling, Deep White Velvet, and Caramel—we have developed 10 master panels featuring hundreds of specific micro-tones to perfectly match your brand’s aesthetic. Rather than starting from scratch, we work directly with our B2B partners to select the exact right tone from our extensive existing archive to apply to your custom or private-label shapes.
(Note: Our complete 500-color digital panel archive is currently being curated for our upcoming 2026-2027 B2B catalog. Please contact our export team to discuss specific color matching for your project).
ESG & Sustainability
Q: What are your Environmental and Carbon Neutral policies?
- A: We operate a carbon-neutral facility. To offset our manufacturing footprint, our team plants approximately 300 trees every month in Cambodia. Furthermore, we recycle 100% of our unfired clay scraps back into our production line, ensuring zero raw material waste. We develop the production of our gas (biogas) from caltivated mass; we fix carbon in water hycinth before transform it in biogass.
Q: How are you ensuring Energy Independence?
- A: To protect our buyers from global supply chain disruptions, we are building our own sustainable energy infrastructure. We are operating an experimental 0.5-hectare plant to produce clean methane, and developing a 7-hectare energy production site in Kompong Thom to ensure our kilns remain 100% self-sustainable. We target to produce more methane than we use at end mid to end 2026.
Q: What are your social and ethical labor practices?
- A: At Khmer Ceramics, true equality means focusing entirely on skill, character, and dedication, without focusing on labels.
While we are a women-owned enterprise with a ~60% female workforce, we do not hire based on gender quotas; we simply hire the best people for the job. Our proudest social achievement is our organic integration of the local deaf and/or mute community. Many years ago, we hired a single deaf artisan. Because we provided a safe, equal-opportunity environment where his skills could shine, his friends and community members eventually followed.
Today, ~50% of our production staff is deaf and/or mute (we not keep accounting). We do not view them as disabled; they are master artisans. By partnering with us, your manufacturing contracts provide safe, highly skilled, and empowering careers that directly uplift motivated communities in Cambodia.