Button Lac (Gala): A Guide for Bangladeshi Buyers

Across Bangladesh the material is called gala. In English-language trade documents it is button lac. It is the same product, and the naming gap causes more confused enquiries than any other single thing in this trade.

This is what button lac actually is, how it differs from the other shellac forms, and how it moves from our facility in Bihar to a warehouse in Dhaka, Khulna or Chattogram.

What button lac is

Button lac is shellac in disc form. Seedlac is melted and filtered by the traditional bhatta method — packed into a long cloth tube held over a charcoal fire and twisted so the molten resin is squeezed through the weave, leaving wax and dirt behind in the cloth. The extruded resin is then dropped onto a flat surface, where each drop spreads and sets into a disc roughly 25–30 mm across.

The alternative is to stretch that same molten resin thin across a warm surface and break it up, which gives shellac flakes. Same seedlac, same melt, different final shape. Our production walkthrough covers the whole chain from insect to container.

Button lac is the older form and remains dominant in South Asian markets. Buyers who work with it are generally buying on appearance and on habit — a familiar disc, a familiar colour, a known melting behaviour — rather than on a written specification sheet.

Why buyers choose discs over flakes

Less surface area. Thicker discs expose less resin to air than thin flakes, so button lac tends to hold its solubility longer in warm storage. That matters in a Bangladeshi warehouse in June.
Easier visual grading. Colour and clarity read clearly through a 25 mm disc. Flakes look paler than they are.
Less breakage in transit. Flakes shatter and generate fines; discs travel better through repeated handling and re-bagging.
Familiarity. Downstream polish makers and furniture workshops have worked with gala for generations and know how it dissolves.

Flakes have their own advantages — faster dissolution, easier weighing for a cut — which is why the wood-finish trade in Western markets prefers them. Neither form is better; they suit different buyers.

Grades, and what actually varies

Button lac grades track the seedlac they were melted from, so the crop is the first question:

Kusmi button lac	Melted from Kusmi seedlac (kusum host tree). Paler, cleaner colour. The premium grade, priced accordingly.
Baisakhi button lac	Melted from the main Rangeeni crop. Darker, more orange. The volume grade and the bulk of what moves into Bangladesh.

Within a crop, what varies between suppliers is filtration discipline — how thoroughly wax and insoluble matter were removed during the melt. That shows up as insolubles on a certificate and as sediment in your customer's polish. It is the parameter worth arguing about.

What does not vary at will is colour. Colour comes from the crop and the host tree, not from a supplier's choice. Anyone offering you pale material at a dark-crop price is either mixing grades or describing something they do not have.

Where it goes downstream

Button lac dissolves in ethanol to make a brush- or pad-applied finish. The main downstream uses across the region are:

Furniture and wood polish — the largest single outlet, from workshop-scale french polishing to small polish manufacturers.
Sealing wax and stationery products
Leather finishing
Handicraft and decorative work, including bangle and ornament manufacture
Electrical insulation and printing inks, in smaller volumes

Note that button lac is waxed shellac — the natural lac wax has been reduced by filtration but not removed. If your customer needs a clear, non-hazing film or a coating for food or pharmaceutical use, that is a dewaxed grade, which is solvent-processed material we source through specialist partners rather than produce at Nawada.

Moving cargo to Bangladesh

For this lane the land border is almost always the better route. Cargo moves from our facility at Nawada by road to Petrapole and crosses to Benapole, typically on FCA or DAP terms. Compared with a sea movement out of Kolkata this is faster, avoids port handling and container costs, and suits the order sizes most trading houses actually place.

FOB Kolkata remains available if you prefer sea freight or are consolidating with other cargo. Our Incoterms guide works through what each term means for your landed cost and where risk transfers.

We do not quote DDP. It requires us to act as importer of record in your market, which we are not set up to do and which would price worse for you than handling clearance through your own broker.

Documentation

Button lac clears under HS 1301.90. A normal consignment travels with a commercial invoice, packing list, transport document, certificate of origin, and a certificate of analysis from a NABL-accredited laboratory covering colour, wax content, moisture and insolubles for the batch.

Plant-health requirements depend on your destination and on the form of the material — processed button lac is treated differently from raw sticklac, and rules vary. Confirm with your clearing agent before the order is placed rather than after the truck is loaded. Our documentation guide covers what each certificate contains and what to check before clearance.

Packing

Button lac is packed in food-grade liners inside multi-wall paper sacks, in 25 kg units unless your order specifies otherwise. Shellac is thermoplastic: stored hot or stacked too high in a warm warehouse, discs will soften and fuse into a block. We cover why that happens and how to prevent it in a separate guide on storage — worth reading before your first consignment lands rather than after.

Buying from us

Tell us the crop grade you want, the quantity, and your delivery point. You will get a firm rate, a written specification, and a sample certificate showing what ships with the cargo. Trial quantities are welcome — most working relationships in this trade start with one small consignment that arrives exactly as described.