Lentils

Red & green, whole and split, Laird to Eston

Lentils are contracted by colour class, size and whether the seed is whole or split, and those three choices move the price more than origin does. Green lentils are sized by name: Laird is the large, flat, 6.5–7mm+ seed that holds its shape in salads and food-service, Richlea sits mid-size around 5–6mm, and Eston is the small green at roughly 4–5mm that suits soups and canning. Red lentils are the higher-turnover class and split into three commercial forms — whole red with the seed coat on, football lentils (dehulled but left whole, the round polished seed prized in the Middle East and South Asia), and red split, which cooks down fastest and is what most dal and soup lines actually buy. Football grade prices above red split precisely because dehulling without splitting costs yield at the mill.

The practical distinction against the siblings in this family is cook-down behaviour. If you need the pulse to disintegrate into a purée or dal, red split does it in fifteen minutes and pigeon peas will not; if you need whole seed identity on a plate, Laird green holds up where red lentils fall apart. Supply is machine-cleaned, gravity-separated, Sortex colour-sorted and destoned, against SGS or Intertek certification of size, purity, moisture, foreign matter, splits and broken percentage in whole lots, damaged and discoloured seed, and crop year, with phytosanitary and fumigation documentation. CBIL arranges 25kg and 50kg PP bags and 1 MT jumbo bags, container-load, on FOB, CFR and CIF terms, predominantly against Canadian and Australian crop with Turkish and Indian material where the trade lane favours it.