Chickpeas

Kabuli by calibre in mm & Desi by count

CBIL brokers chickpeas against the one variable that sets the price: calibre. Kabuli chickpeas are contracted in millimetres — 7mm, 8mm, 9mm and 10mm — and cross-checked by count per 100g, because calibre and count are two readings of the same thing and buyers verify one against the other. Roughly, 10mm material runs about 30–40 seeds per 100g, 9mm around 40–50, 8mm around 50–60 and 7mm around 58–70. The jump from 8mm to 9mm is where the price curve steepens sharply, and 10mm bold is a genuinely scarce, appearance-led grade. Desi chickpeas — smaller, darker, thicker-skinned — sit well below Kabuli and are bought by weight and yield rather than looks, which is why dal mills splitting into chana dal or milling into besan buy Desi and never pay Kabuli money for it.

So the choice is straightforward once you name the end use. Canners, retail packers and HORECA buyers whose customer sees a whole bean specify Kabuli at 8mm or above; hummus and falafel producers commonly settle at 8mm as the sweet spot between yield and cost; dal millers and besan grinders take Desi. Supply is machine-cleaned, gravity-separated, Sortex colour-sorted and graded against SGS or Intertek certification of calibre, count, purity, moisture, foreign matter, damaged and split seed, insect damage and crop year, with phytosanitary and methyl-bromide or phosphine fumigation documentation for your destination. We arrange 25kg and 50kg PP bags and 1 MT jumbo bags, container-load, on FOB, CFR and CIF terms against current-crop material — carry-over is disclosed, never quietly shipped.