Black-Eyed Beans (Cowpeas)

Cream cowpeas with a black eye, sold on count per 100 g, colour and Sortex cleaning

Black-eyed beans are the cream-coloured cowpea with a black hilum, traded under HS 0713.35 and known as black-eyed peas in North America, frijol castilla in Peru, lobia in South Asia and pelun in Myanmar. The price is set by three things a buyer can see: size, colour and cleanliness. Size is quoted as count per 100 g, and a lower count is a bigger bean: lots at 460 to 480 per 100 g are the large grade packers in Europe and North America ask for, 480 to 520 is the ordinary export run, and smaller beans go to splitting and flour. A Myanmar lot offered at 510 per 100 g sits in that ordinary bracket, at roughly 0.2 g a seed. Colour should be an even cream with a sharp black eye; a yellowed or brown-tinged lot is old crop or was dried badly. Cleaning is described by the passes it has had: machine-cleaned, gravity-separated, and Sortex or double Sortex, meaning one or two passes through an optical colour sorter that removes discoloured, stained and foreign seed. Myanmar's fair average quality standard for the bean allows 1% foreign matter, 3% weevilled, 3% otherwise damaged, 1% brokens and 14% moisture; a double-Sortex lot is contracted well inside those limits, and European packers work to 15% moisture and 3% broken at most.

Europe imports about 11,000 t of cowpeas a year, with Portugal the largest single market at about 3,300 t, then the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Greece and Spain; Myanmar supplied 27% of European imports in 2023, Brazil 22% and Madagascar 20%, with Peru and Argentina behind them. Peru exported about 9,000 t in 2025, mostly from Piura, at about USD 1,150 per tonne FOB in early 2026, and sells a larger, whiter bean to the United States, Colombia and southern Europe. Madagascar's crop from the Boeny region has been about 18,000 to 24,000 t a year. CBIL brokers black-eyed beans from Myanmar, Peru and Madagascar against SGS or Intertek certification of count, moisture, admixture, damaged and weevilled seed and crop year, with phytosanitary and fumigation certificates to the destination's rules. Myanmar cargoes ship from Yangon under an export licence, and payment runs only through banks that are not subject to sanctions; the seller's bank is checked before a contract is written. The European Union applies a default pesticide residue limit of 0.01 mg/kg to most actives on pulses and tests cowpeas at the border, so a residue analysis from an accredited laboratory travels with every lot for that market. Packing is 25 kg or 50 kg polypropylene bags, about 24 t in a 20 ft container, on FOB, CFR and CIF terms.

See also: Black-eyed beans CFR UK (Felixstowe, London Gateway) · Mung beans, also sold on seed size · Kidney beans and Rajma

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Excluded origins are not offered, including product re-exported, blended or re-processed through a third country. Every lot moves with a certificate of origin naming the producing plant, mine or grower country, and nothing is quoted before the seller and loading point are known.