Buying drilling chemicals from China can cut an Iraqi importer’s cost substantially — the products are mature and the factories are real. The risk is not that Chinese PAC or xanthan gum does not work; it is that you cannot easily check which seller is real and which bag matches its paper. Iraq makes this harder than most markets: there is no quick public registry lookup for foreign counterparties, and banking friction punishes mistakes severely. This checklist is written for that reality. It applies whether you buy from us or from anyone else.
Three reasons. First, you cannot self-serve-verify easily — checking a company registration in Iraq itself is substantially an in-person process, and there is no habit of instant registry lookups; checking a Chinese company from Basra or Erbil means working across language, distance, and unfamiliar databases. Second, a payment mistake is expensive to unwind — with correspondent-bank capacity for USD transfers limited, a wire sent to a fraudulent account is slow to trace and nearly impossible to recover. Third, the goods travel far — by the time a bad batch reaches an Iraqi warehouse, the seller has been paid for weeks. The checklist below is ordered to catch problems before money moves.
| Check | How | What a pass looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Business license | Ask for the Chinese business license (营业执照) and its 18-digit unified social credit code | The company name on the license matches the name on the quotation and the bank account — character for character |
| Export capability | Ask whether they export directly or through an export agent; ask for a recent bill of lading (details masked is fine) | They can show real, recent export shipments of the same product class |
| Factory or trader | Ask directly, and ask for a video call from the production floor | A clear answer either way — traders can be fine, but a trader claiming to be a factory is a red flag |
| Product scope | Check the license's business scope covers chemicals | Drilling chemicals are consistent with the registered scope |
None of this requires reading Chinese fluently — the license is a standardized document, and the one thing you must match exactly is the company name against the bank account name. That single check defeats the most common fraud pattern.
Paper first, then powder. Before ordering: a specification sheet stated against API Spec 13A test methods(with the edition named — vague “API quality” claims are a warning sign), a certificate-of-analysis format, and a safety data sheet. With the order: a batch COA whose numbers are plausible against the specification — identical, perfectly round numbers on every batch suggest a template, not a laboratory. For a first order of meaningful size, add independent pre-shipment inspection: an international inspection company samples the product, witnesses loading, and seals the container. Iraq operates a conformity-assessment program for imports administered through international inspection companies — where your import route requires an inspection certificate, arrange it at origin; where it does not, a voluntary inspection on a first order is cheap insurance. A seller who resists third-party inspection is itself a red flag — the strongest one there is.
The red-flag canon is consistent everywhere: never pay a personal account, never pay by Western Union or cryptocurrency, never pay 100% upfront to a new supplier. The working norm for this trade is 30% deposit, 70% against shipping documents — the balance moves only when the bill of lading, packing list, and batch COA prove what is on the water. From Iraq, staged terms have a second value beyond fraud protection: they split the transfer into smaller wires that are easier to arrange through the limited number of banks handling USD, instead of one large prepayment. The banking mechanics are covered in the Iraq payment guide.
A first order should be a trial order — one pallet to one container, not a year’s stock. Test the batch against its COA on arrival (filtrate, viscosity, moisture — your mud engineer or a local lab can run the API tests), file the results, and scale only when the paper and the powder agree. Keep every document set; a supplier whose documents are consistent across three shipments has earned the fourth.
Ironstone exists because this checking is real work. We are a Canadian-registered trading company: we audit the factory, hold the license documents, issue a batch COA referenced to API Spec 13A test methods, arrange independent inspection, and take staged payment — so the verification arrives with the quote instead of being your project. Ask us for the full document set and hold it against this page.