Our supply agreements were written when we had one supplier and one customer. We now have forty of each.
Manufacturing runs on paper that was usually drafted for a smaller business and never revisited: supply terms that assume one currency, quality clauses with no remedy, and purchase orders that quietly incorporate the other side’s conditions. We own the contract layer and the disputes that come out of it.
Dinmore Bell acts as the outsourced General Counsel for manufacturers: supply and distribution agreements, quality and warranty terms, retention of title, plant and equipment leases, and the disputes that arise from them. It is a retained function on a fixed monthly fee rather than a law firm billing by the hour.
How we own it
The battle of the forms, settled
Most manufacturers do not know whose terms govern their largest relationships, because each side keeps sending its own. We establish which terms actually apply, fix the order in which documents are exchanged, and make sure your conditions are the ones that land.
Quality, warranty and the cost of a bad batch
What happens when a component fails downstream is a commercial question long before it is a legal one. We write the specification, inspection and remedy terms so the answer is known in advance and the liability sits where it was priced.
Getting paid, and keeping title
Retention of title that survives a customer insolvency, credit terms that are enforced rather than aspirational, and a recovery process that starts on day 31 rather than day 120.
Where specialists come in
Product safety prosecutions, health and safety enforcement, and any matter before a court are conducted by regulated specialists whom we instruct, brief and coordinate. Regulated advice on customs classification, duty and VAT treatment is taken from specialist advisers. We hold the budget and remain accountable for the commercial outcome.
Services we run here
- Can you handle our supplier terms across several countries?
- Yes. We work UK and international, and where a term needs to be enforceable under a local law we do not practise, we instruct local counsel and coordinate them rather than handing you a list of firms.
- We are mid-dispute with a supplier. Can you take it over?
- Usually. We review what has been said so far — correspondence is evidence, and a great deal of damage is done in the first three emails — then take the correspondence over and set a position.