Kidney Beans (Rajma)

Light red, dark red & Rajma Chitra speckled

Kidney beans split into commercially distinct types that are not substitutes for one another. Dark red kidney beans hold their deep colour and skin integrity through retorting, which is why canners and chilli producers specify them and pay for them. Light red kidney beans are milder in colour and slightly softer, favoured across parts of the Caribbean and Latin American trade. Rajma Chitra — the speckled, mottled red-and-cream bean from the Indian and Nepalese hills — is a different proposition again: smaller, thinner-skinned, faster-cooking and creamier, and North Indian retail and food-service buyers will not accept a plain dark red in its place. White kidney beans (cannellini / alubia) round out the line for Mediterranean and soup applications. Grading is by count per 100g, typically 90–130 depending on type and calibre, and bolder counts price up.

The deciding variable for most industrial buyers is not colour but skin integrity through the retort. A bean that splits or sloughs its skin in the can is a rejected batch regardless of how it looked in the bag, so we specify against damaged and split percentages tightly and against crop year, since older beans harden and lengthen soak and cook times — the same hard-seed problem that quietly wrecks canner yields. Lots are machine-cleaned, gravity-separated, Sortex colour-sorted and destoned, certified by SGS or Intertek for count, purity, moisture, foreign matter, split and damaged seed, discoloured beans 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.