A confirmed purchase order for Japanese Wagyu rarely fails all at once. More often the Japanese supplier comes back a week before the booked departure and says that two cut lines are short: the chilled striploin is partly unavailable, the ribeye is fine, the tenderloin slips to the following week. The order is still live, the import permit is still in hand, and the buyer in Ho Chi Minh City or Hanoi has to decide, line by line, what sails and what waits.
This article covers that single decision point: how to re-split cut lines across consignments so that permit quantity, invoice line items, packing list weights and the health certificate stay consistent, and what the short-ship / amend / hold choice costs per cut. Neighboring articles cover the stages around it. If you are still setting the HS code and valuation fields for a normal full shipment, read the import dossier and valuation lock article. If you are counting the days needed to obtain the permit before your first order, read the permit lead-time day ledger. If the goods have already arrived and you are pricing cold-store slots, read the freezer slot earnings worksheet. This one sits between the order and the departure.
The three options, stated plainly
When a supplier can fill only part of a confirmed Wagyu PO, there are three responses, and most buyers mix them across lines rather than choosing one for the whole order.
- Ship short. Send what is packed, leave the shortfall unshipped, and keep the order documents aligned to the reduced quantity. The missing kilograms either disappear from the PO or move to a new one.
- Amend and re-cut the documents. Formally reduce the PO quantity and have the invoice, packing list and certificate issued against the new figures before the goods leave Japan, so the arrival pack is internally consistent.
- Hold the lot. Wait until every line can be packed, then ship once. One consignment, one set of documents, one customs entry — but every chilled line ages while waiting.
In practice, "ship short" and "amend" are not alternatives. Shipping short without amending is what produces the mismatch that costs money at arrival: a packing list that says 180 kg against an invoice that says 240 kg will be questioned. The real choice is between shipping a reduced, correctly documented consignment and holding the whole order.
Why temperature state drives the decision
The cost of waiting is not the same for every line, and the difference is not a matter of opinion. A chilled vacuum-packed cut has a finite window from packing to the end of its usable life, and every day spent waiting in Japan is a day subtracted from what the buyer can sell in Vietnam. A frozen cut held at a stable temperature does not lose window in the same way; the cost of rolling it to a later consignment is the cost of storage and the cost of the second freight booking, not the cost of lost shelf days.
That asymmetry is the whole logic of the ledger below. Chilled lines want to move now. Frozen lines can wait. A partial fill that leaves chilled cuts sitting while frozen cuts are completed is usually the most expensive arrangement available, because it spends the scarce resource (chilled days) to protect the cheap one (a second booking).
Treat the specific numbers as yours, not ours. If you want to know what a delay costs on a given line, measure it on your own records: take the packing date and the end-of-window date your supplier states for that cut, subtract the transit and clearance days you actually experience on this lane, and the remainder is the sellable days you receive. Run the subtraction twice — once for departure this week, once for departure in the delayed week — and the difference is the day-loss figure for that line. Multiply by your own margin per kilogram per day and you have a number you can defend internally, instead of a rule of thumb borrowed from another importer.
The Partial Fill Allocation Ledger
One row per cut line, filled in during the call with the Japanese supplier. The columns are deliberately boring; the point is that the decision flag in the last column falls out of the earlier columns rather than out of a negotiation mood.
| Column | What goes in it | Where the figure comes from |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Cut line | Striploin, ribeye, tenderloin, chuck roll, trim, by grade and specification as ordered | Your PO |
| 2. Confirmed PO kg | Quantity as originally accepted | Your PO |
| 3. Available kg this week | What the supplier can actually pack for the booked departure | Supplier confirmation, in writing |
| 4. Shortfall kg | Column 2 minus column 3 | Arithmetic |
| 5. Temperature state | Chilled or frozen, as specified on the order | Your PO and the supplier's packing spec |
| 6. Sellable days on arrival | End-of-window date minus expected release date | Your own subtraction, per the method above |
| 7. Cost of one week's delay | Day-loss (col. 6 difference) × your margin per kg per day, or storage cost if frozen | Your own margin and cold-store rates |
| 8. Document fields affected if reduced | Invoice line, packing list weight and carton count, permit quantity, certificate quantity | Checklist below |
| 9. Decision flag | Ship now / roll to next consignment / cancel line | Read off columns 5 and 7 |
Scroll sideways to see the whole table
A worked row, with figures you should replace with your own: a chilled striploin line confirmed at 120 kg, available at 70 kg, shortfall 50 kg, chilled, and your subtraction in column 6 shows the delayed departure arriving with materially fewer sellable days than the current one. Column 7 turns that day-loss into money at your margin. Because the line is chilled and column 7 is non-trivial, column 9 reads "ship now" for the 70 kg, and the 50 kg shortfall becomes a separate decision — new PO or cancel — rather than a reason to delay the 70 kg.
A second worked row: frozen trim confirmed at 300 kg, available at 150 kg. Frozen, so column 7 is storage and the incremental freight share rather than lost shelf life. Column 9 reads "roll to next consignment," and the line leaves this consignment entirely — which also removes it from the invoice and packing list, and therefore from the certificate.
Document field change checklist
This is the part that decides whether the amendment is cheaper than the hold. A reduced consignment is only cheap if every document in the arrival pack describes the same goods. Before the Japanese departure date, confirm each of the following with the supplier and with your customs broker in Vietnam:
- Commercial invoice. Line-level quantity and line value for each reduced or removed cut, and the recalculated total. If a line is removed entirely, it should not survive as a zero-quantity row.
- Packing list. Net and gross weight per carton, carton count, and the marks. This is the document most often left at the original figures, and it is the one that is physically checked.
- Health certificate. Quantity and description must match the goods actually packed. Whether a reduced quantity can travel on a certificate issued for a larger quantity, or whether the certificate must be re-issued, is a question for the issuing authority in Japan and for the Department of Animal Health in Vietnam — confirm it case by case, in writing, before departure.
- Import permit quantity. Whether your permit allows a consignment smaller than the permitted quantity without amendment, and whether the unused balance can be drawn down on a later consignment inside the permit validity, determines whether rolling a line is administratively free or expensive. This is the single most load-bearing unknown in the whole decision, and it is the one you should confirm with the Vietnamese authority and your broker before you need the answer, not during the week you need it.
- Bill of lading / air waybill. Piece count and weight, consistent with the revised packing list.
- Customs valuation position. Splitting one PO across two consignments changes the unit mix in each. Check with your broker whether the valuation basis you previously settled still applies to each consignment taken separately.
Regulatory and documentary requirements for animal products entering Vietnam are revised from time to time, including permit quantity handling, certificate re-issue practice and registered establishment lists. Verify the current position with MARD and the Department of Animal Health, and the current Japanese export certificate format with the issuing authority, rather than relying on how a shipment was handled previously.
Sequencing: why "before departure" is the hinge
Every document in the checklist above can be corrected before the goods leave Japan. After departure, corrections become amendments made against goods already in motion, which involves more parties and more waiting, and the goods are accruing storage or losing window while it happens. Certificate changes in particular depend on an issuing authority rather than on the exporter's office hours, so the time they take is not something the supplier can simply agree to compress. Ask your supplier what re-issue turnaround applies to the invoice, packing list and certificate in their case, and treat that answer as a hard input into whether the amendment can be completed before the booking.
A practical sequence for the week a partial fill is announced:
- Get the available quantity per cut line in writing, not by phone.
- Fill columns 4 to 7 of the ledger the same day.
- Set the decision flags: chilled lines with meaningful day-loss ship now; frozen lines roll.
- Send the supplier the exact revised figures per line, and ask which documents they will re-issue and by when.
- Confirm with your broker that the permit quantity treatment and the certificate quantity are acceptable for the reduced consignment.
- Release the booking only when steps 4 and 5 are both answered.
If step 5 cannot be answered before the booking cut-off, holding the lot is the safer choice for that week — not because holding is good, but because an arrival mismatch on animal products is a slower and less predictable cost than a week of delay you can see coming.
What to ask the supplier so column 2 is usable
The ledger is only as good as column 3, the available quantity per week. That figure is a supply question, and it is worth asking for it at the quoting stage rather than at the departure stage. When you request pricing, ask for it per cut line with an indication of what volume can realistically be packed per shipping week, so your allocation decisions start from something firmer than a single-shot availability check.
First Agri exports Japanese Wagyu by the cut and quotes per cut line. Send your cut list, target grades and the shipping weeks you are working toward, and we will come back with wholesale pricing by line. Sample availability and terms are confirmed per inquiry. Discuss your requirements.