What we broker, in detail

We broker pyrolysis oil, from the Netherlands, across Europe and beyond: tyre-derived (TPO), plastic-derived (PPO) and biomass pyrolysis oil, into refiners, steam crackers, carbon black producers and industrial fuel users. On what actually decides a deal, it comes down to five numbers and one question. The numbers are chlorine, silicon, sulphur, water and metals. The question is whether your oil is legally a waste or a product, and it catches almost every newcomer. Send us the assay and the monthly tonnage and you will get a straight read, including when the answer is that you are not ready yet.

Answered on this page

• Can pyrolysis oil move in an isotank?
• Can additives rescue an off-spec pyrolysis oil?
• How long can pyrolysis oil sit in a tank before it is a problem?
• What is pyrolysis oil actually worth?

We broker waste plastics into recyclers, chemical recyclers and pyrolysis plants across Europe and on export. On what decides it: a clean, repeatable bale with a moisture figure and actual photographs places quickly, and an unsorted mixed load at any price is now genuinely hard to move. On the rules, the export picture changed materially in 2026 and it changed hardest for the lower grades. Tell us what you have arising monthly and we will tell you where it realistically goes.

Answered on this page

• What happens to plastic waste exports after 2026?
• What does the export ban do to prices?
• Is chemical recycling a way around the sorting problem?
• What information does a buyer need before quoting on a bale?

We broker waste PET and rPET, from bales and flake through to food grade pellet. On what decides the grade: colour, contamination and the intrinsic viscosity, and the food contact route is a different conversation entirely with its own approvals. On volume, a clean single stream places far more easily than a larger mixed one, which is not what most sellers expect to hear.

Answered on this page

• What is intrinsic viscosity and why does every rPET buyer ask for it?
• Why does a few parts per million of PVC ruin a batch?
• Does post-industrial scrap count towards the PPWR targets?
• What IV is needed for bottle-grade rPET?

We broker vegetable and technical oils, with the emphasis on grades that sit outside the food chain: technical and non-food grades, acid oils, soapstock, PFAD, palm acid oil and distillers corn oil, alongside crude and refined palm, soy, rape, sunflower and corn oil. Most of what we place is heading into an oleochemical, feed or energy outlet rather than a food one, which changes the specification that matters and the buyer that pays best.

Answered on this page

• Why is my vegetable oil worth less in fuel than I expected?
• Can palm oil still be sold into European fuel?
• What is EUDR and does it affect my oil?
• What do buyers screen vegetable oil on?

We broker used cooking oil between collectors and aggregators on one side and FAME, HVO and SAF producers on the other, across Europe and on import parcels. UCO sits in Annex IX Part B of the Renewable Energy Directive, and that is where the value comes from. Which means the certificate and the traceability behind it are part of the product, not paperwork attached to it. On what that is worth in practice: a cargo whose chain of custody will not survive an audit is worth a fraction of one that will, and the gap is far wider than most sellers expect.

Answered on this page

• What ruins a load of used cooking oil?
• How much used cooking oil does a restaurant actually produce?
• How is UCO priced?
• What specification does UCO need to meet?

We broker animal fats and tallow across all three ABP categories into biodiesel, renewable diesel, oleochemical and, where the category permits, feed outlets. The first question is never the specification, it is the category under Regulation (EC) No 1069/2009, because that decides which outlets are legally available at all. Only once that is settled do FFA, titre, moisture and impurities decide the price.

Answered on this page

• What is the difference between category 1, 2 and 3 animal fat?
• Why is category 3 tallow often worth less into fuel than category 1?
• What is titre and why does every buyer ask for it?
• Is category 1 material banned from use?

We broker POME oil, SBEO and SSAO into European producers. These are three different products from three different places, and they get confused constantly: POME oil comes off palm oil mill effluent, SBEO is recovered from spent bleaching earth, and SSAO is soapstock acid oil from caustic refining. On what decides the value: national classification, more than the specification does. The same parcel can be treated differently in two member states, and that difference is often worth more than anything you can change at the mill.

Answered on this page

• What is POME-FAD?
• What is the difference between SBEO and SSAO?
• How is soapstock turned into acid oil?
• What does pretreated or refined POME actually mean?

SBEO, spent bleaching earth oil, is the oil recovered from the clay used to bleach vegetable oils. Bleaching earth leaves a refinery holding a significant amount of oil, and recovering it turns a disposal cost into a feedstock. That is the entire commercial logic of the product. It is bought by the same European pretreatment and HVO producers that take POME oil and acid oils, it carries a specification with hard limits rather than a description, and under Annex IX it is a feedstock that requires assessment rather than an automatic listing. We broker it, and the first thing we ask a seller is not the FFA but the date the earth was generated.

Answered on this page

• What is SBEO?
• What is a normal FFA for SBEO?
• What is the difference between SBEO and SSAO?
• Is SBEO an Annex IX feedstock?

We broker FAME biodiesel between producers and blenders, traders and end users. On the standard: EN 14214 is the reference, and quoting EN 15940 instead tells a buyer immediately that you have the wrong product in mind. On what is actually traded, it is the ester plus the sustainability claim behind it: the same litres with and without a defensible chain of custody are two different products at two different prices.

Answered on this page

• What is the minimum ester content under EN 14214?
• What is the difference between UCOME, RME and TME?
• Why does CFPP cause so many rejected cargoes?
• Does double counting still apply to FAME in the EU?

We broker HVO renewable diesel, sustainable aviation fuel and bionaphtha between producers, oil majors, distributors, aviation fuel suppliers and petrochemical buyers. These are hydrotreated products, so the conversation is different from FAME: they are chemically drop-in, which means the specification is rarely the obstacle and the feedstock traceability, the certification chain and the mandate treatment are.

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• What is the difference between HVO, SAF and bio-naphtha?
• Which of the three is worth the most?
• Do these fuels need engine modifications?
• Can one plant make all three at once?

Off-spec is a speciality here, not an afterthought. On what usually happens: a parcel misses one number, the buyer walks, and the seller calls everyone at once, which tells the market the cargo is in trouble and takes the price down further. On what works: establish exactly which parameter failed and by how much, find out whether it can be blended, treated or sold to a buyer with a different limit, and approach a short list quietly.

Answered on this page

• How quickly can you place an off-spec cargo?
• What happens to off-spec biodiesel?
• Do you buy distressed cargo yourselves?
• Should I keep the retained samples?

A cargo claim is a commercial problem before it is a legal one. On what usually happens: discharge analysis disagrees with load, both sides dig in, and the parcel sits accruing demurrage while lawyers are appointed. On what actually settles it: the sealed samples taken jointly at load, the test method named in the contract, and an umpire laboratory agreed while everyone was still friendly. Send us the two analyses and the contract and you will get an honest read on where you stand.

Answered on this page

• How long do I have to bring a quality claim?
• The buyer says the cargo is off-spec. What do I do first?
• Can you help if we did not broker the cargo?
• When should I stop negotiating and get a lawyer?

We broker plastic pyrolysis oil (PPO) into crackers, refiners and purifiers. On what decides it: chlorine, first and last. A cracker works to single-digit ppm and untreated oil from mixed plastic waste often arrives at hundreds or thousands. Everything between those two numbers is the deal. Silicon is the one people forget, and it is usually missing from the analysis rather than out of range. On fractions, our buyers take light and middle. If you cannot reach cracker grade, that is not the end of it: there is a purification step in between, and it is a different buyer with a different specification.

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• How much oil do I get from a tonne of plastic?
• What is the calorific value of plastic pyrolysis oil?
• How is plastic pyrolysis oil priced?
• What tests should I run on plastic pyrolysis oil?

We broker tyre pyrolysis oil (TPO), including heavy fraction and non-distilled material, which is where a lot of the real trade sits. On outlets: the aromatic content that rules TPO out of a steam cracker is exactly what a carbon black producer wants, so being turned down by one does not mean being turned down by the market. On specification, sulphur and chlorine lead, with water and sediment close behind. Tell us the fraction, the assay and the monthly volume, and we will tell you which of the two routes you are actually in.

Answered on this page

• What is the difference between tyre pyrolysis oil and plastic pyrolysis oil?
• Which tyre pyrolysis oil fractions are you looking for?
• What is non-distilled TPO?
• Why do carbon black producers want the heavy fraction?

We broker recovered carbon black (rCB) from tyre pyrolysis, alongside the oil from the same plant. The thing to understand first is that rCB is not one product: the difference between material that a rubber compounder qualifies and material that ends up as a fuel is ash content, residual volatiles and consistency, not the process that made it. Ash comes from the inorganic fillers and the zinc oxide in the original tyre and it cannot be pyrolysed away, only separated. Send us the ash, the toluene transmittance, the particle size distribution and three consecutive batch reports, and we will tell you which market you are in.

Answered on this page

• What is recovered carbon black?
• What ash content do buyers want?
• Can recovered carbon black replace virgin carbon black completely?
• Which ASTM standards apply to rCB?

Recovered carbon black is bought by six different industries in Europe, and they do not want the same material. Tyre manufacturers take the largest volumes and apply the hardest qualification. Non-tyre rubber goods, shoe soles, conveyor belts, mats, seals, vibration dampers, are where most new producers actually get qualified first, because the tolerance is wider and rCB can go in at much higher loadings, in some applications replacing the virgin grade entirely. Plastics and masterbatch buy it as pigment and filler. Printing inks and coatings pay the most per tonne and screen the hardest on grit and consistency. Asphalt is real but still largely at research and trial scale. And the carbon black producers themselves have taken positions rather than treating rCB purely as competition.

Answered on this page

• Who actually buys recovered carbon black in Europe?
• Can recovered carbon black be used in shoe soles?
• Can rCB be used in printing ink?
• Is recovered carbon black used in asphalt?

A certificate number proves you are certified. The annex proves what you are certified FOR, and only the second one matters for a specific cargo. Material may only be handled as sustainable if it is included in the certificate annex of the system user. Two valid certificates can still fail to line up: if your annex covers a material your buyer's annex does not, they cannot receive it as sustainable, and the sustainability declaration is worthless to them. That is not a paperwork detail, it is the difference between a certified cargo and an ordinary one, and the price gap between those two is the whole point of being certified.

Answered on this page

• Does my ISCC certificate cover this product?
• What does "entirely or partly of animal origin" mean on a certificate?
• Can two certified companies still be unable to trade certified material?
• Are FAME from used cooking oil and FAME from rapeseed the same product group?

A waste lipid can usually become more than one fuel, and the classification decides more about its value than the chemistry does. Used cooking oil, animal fat, POME and acid oils all feed the same two processing routes, hydrotreatment (HVO, and via the same units SAF) and esterification (FAME), but they do not carry the same regulatory weight. Annex IX Part A materials get dedicated quotas; Part B sits under a national cap; food and feed crops sit outside both and under their own limit. Two cargoes with an identical fatty acid profile can therefore be worth very different amounts, and the cheapest way to lose money in this market is to assume the chemistry settles it.

Answered on this page

• Can used cooking oil become SAF?
• What is the difference between HVO and FAME as an outlet for my material?
• Can POME go to aviation fuel?
• Why is my rapeseed oil worth less than used cooking oil for biofuel?

HVO is a hydrocarbon, not an ester: which is why it behaves so differently from FAME and why the conversation moves so quickly past the specification. Made by hydrotreating vegetable oils, waste oils and fats, it is specified under EN 15940 for paraffinic diesel, and HVO100 can be used neat in approved applications. We broker it between producers, majors, distributors and large fleet users. What is actually being traded is the feedstock and the certificate: two identical litres of EN 15940 fuel can be worth materially different money depending on what they were made from and what the buyer can count.

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• Where can I follow HVO market news and developments?
• What is the difference between HVO and biodiesel?
• Does HVO perform better in cold weather?
• How long does HVO keep in storage?

We broker SAF and its feedstocks. On the specification: ASTM D7566 governs, organised as annexes per production pathway with a blend limit for each, and once correctly blended the fuel is treated as meeting ASTM D1655. On the commercial side, this is a mandate-driven market rather than a price-driven one, which changes who you should be talking to and when. Happy to look at where your material fits if it is useful.

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• What feedstock can actually be used to make SAF today?
• Why is SAF capped at 50 % blending?
• How much SAF does Europe actually have to buy?
• Is SAF the same as HVO?

Bionaphtha is the light co-product of hydrotreating fats and oils into HVO and SAF, and it has two possible homes with very different economics. Into a steam cracker it becomes certified renewable feedstock for bio-based polymers, and the premium comes from the claim a brand owner can make downstream. Into gasoline blending it is a good blend component and prices much closer to fossil naphtha. We broker it between producers and both sets of buyers, and which route is open depends almost entirely on the certification.

Answered on this page

• What is bio-naphtha used for?
• Is bio-naphtha the same as renewable naphtha?
• What does a cracker screen bio-naphtha on?
• What is bionaphtha?

Annex IX is where the value sits, and where most of the arguments start. On Part A: double counting where a member state allows it, which is why the letter your feedstock sits under matters more than the tonne. On Part B: UCO and animal fats, capped in most member states. On what we see go wrong, it is almost never the material and almost always the documentation behind the claim. Send us the certification chain and we will tell you whether it holds.

Answered on this page

• Someone asked me for "annex 9" and "euro 1" documents. What do they mean?
• How do I prove which part my material falls under?
• Is a waste code the same thing as an Annex IX classification?
• Does double counting still apply in the Netherlands and Germany?

Recycled carbon fuels are liquid or gaseous fuels made from waste or exhaust gas of non-renewable origin, where the waste is no longer suitable for material recycling. In practice that means non-recyclable plastic waste and unavoidable industrial waste gases, usually converted by pyrolysis or gasification. The critical point, and the one that catches people out: an RCF is not a renewable fuel. It sits outside Annex IX entirely and is accounted for under its own rules, with a 70 % greenhouse gas saving threshold set by Delegated Regulation (EU) 2023/1185.

Answered on this page

• Do recycled carbon fuels double count under RED III?
• What is the difference between a recycled carbon fuel and a biofuel?
• Does the 70 percent threshold for recycled carbon fuels mean the same as the 70 percent for low carbon fuels?
• Is pyrolysis oil from plastic a recycled carbon fuel?

We broker crude, technical and refined glycerine between biodiesel producers and the refiners, oleochemical plants and biogas operators who take it. On what decides the price: five numbers, and an offer without them is an enquiry rather than an offer. Glycerol content, water, ash, MONG and residual methanol. On the paperwork, crude glycerine sits in Annex IX Part A, which a surprising number of producers still treat as a disposal problem.

Answered on this page

• What is MONG in glycerine and why does everyone ask about it?
• What should be on a crude glycerine offer?
• Is crude glycerine an Annex IX feedstock?
• What is MONG in a glycerine specification?

Fusel oil is the higher-alcohol fraction separated during ethanol distillation, made up mainly of amyl alcohols with smaller amounts of propanol, butanol and isobutanol. Volumes are meaningful wherever fuel ethanol is made at scale, and it is one of those co-products that gets sold cheaply because the producer treats it as a distillation nuisance rather than a chemical feedstock. We place it into mineral processing, solvent and chemical outlets, and we have people close to the Brazilian production base.

Answered on this page

• What should a fusel oil offer contain?
• Why does the water content of fusel oil matter so much?
• What is fusel oil?
• What is fusel oil used for?

We help counterparties find tank storage, using terminal contacts built over years. On when it matters: storage is usually the thing holding a deal up rather than price, and a seller who can name a tank is in a different conversation from one who cannot. On freight, we arrange flexitanks, isotanks and containers through forwarding partners and we make the introduction rather than marking up their invoice, so you see the quote they gave.

Answered on this page

• Can you find storage for diesel, Jet A-1 or SAF as well, or only feedstocks?
• Do I need heated storage for my cargo?
• What goes wrong most often in the logistics of these products?
• Do you mark up freight?

Co-processing is a refinery running bio feedstock through its existing units alongside crude oil. The renewable and fossil molecules come out inseparably mixed, so the renewable share is established by mass balance accounting rather than by physical segregation. For aviation this route is limited: ASTM D1655 Annex A1 permits co-processing at up to 5 %, well below the 50 % blending limit available to HEFA-SPK produced as a standalone fuel. The attraction is that co-processing needs no new plant, so it delivers renewable volume from existing refineries.

Answered on this page

• How can anyone tell a co-processed fuel apart from fossil fuel?
• Is a co-processed fuel worth the same as HVO?
• What is co-processing?
• What is the co-processing limit for jet fuel?

We broker fish oil and marine fats from fish processing residues into fuel and oleochemical outlets. The parameter that decides everything is the iodine value: fish oil is far more unsaturated than other feedstocks, which usually rules out FAME and points the material at hydrotreatment. The largest export origin is South East Asia, where pangasius processing in the Mekong Delta produces fat as a by-product at scale; Peru and Chile supply anchovy-derived oil, and northern Europe supplies herring and whitefish streams. We never take title.

Answered on this page

• Can fish oil be used to make biodiesel?
• Is fish oil an Annex IX feedstock?
• What iodine value does fish oil have?
• Where does fish oil for biofuel come from?

We broker crude tall oil (CTO) from kraft pulping into fuel and oleochemical outlets. On what sets the value: the split between fatty acids and rosin acids, plus the unsaponifiables, and none of it is negotiable because the wood and the mill decide it. On where it goes, the chemical market can often pay more for rosin rich material than the fuel market will, so if you are being offered CTO at a fuel price it is worth asking what the rosin content is first.

Answered on this page

• What determines the value of a crude tall oil parcel?
• What is crude tall oil?
• Is crude tall oil an Annex IX feedstock?
• What acid number does fuel-quality CTO need?

CNSL is the dark, viscous phenolic liquid held in the cashew nut shell, and it is one of the few genuinely large-volume natural sources of long-chain phenols: anacardic acid, cardanol and cardol. That chemistry is why it is bought by resin, coatings and friction material manufacturers rather than purely as an energy product. We broker technical, acid and distilled grades out of Vietnam and Africa, which are the two origins we actually work.

Answered on this page

• Can CNSL be used as a marine or bunker fuel?
• Why do some receivers refuse CNSL in a bunker blend?
• Is CNSL sustainable as a fuel feedstock?
• What is CNSL?

Acid oils are the concentrated fatty acid streams that come out of vegetable oil refining, and esterified acid oils are those streams upgraded by esterification into material a biodiesel plant can actually run. Two things govern the trade. Commercially, total fatty acid is the pricing basis, not tonnage: you are buying the usable fraction, not the drum. Regulatory, the origin of the parent oil decides the Annex IX position and therefore much of the value.

Answered on this page

• What is TFM and why do buyers ask for it?
• Should I quote TFM as well as FFA?
• Does esterification clean up an acid oil?
• What should I ask for when buying esterified acid oil?

This trade is inherently cross-border. Feedstock is collected where people live and eat, processed where there is capacity, and consumed where there is a mandate, and those are rarely the same place. We work on pyrolysis oil projects and feedstock flows across Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the Americas, with team members in the Netherlands, Brazil, Scotland, England and the Czech Republic, and counterparty relationships considerably wider than that.

Answered on this page

• Which countries do you work with?
• Do you handle the export documentation?
• What is the most common reason a cross-border deal fails?
• Do you speak the language of my market?

We do more than introduce buyers and sellers: we also supply additives and blending chemicals, and it is a real part of what we do rather than a sideline. Cold flow additives such as pour point depressants and CFPP improvers, octane improvers, antioxidants, static dissipaters, process chemicals such as potassium hydroxide and methanol, and the two alkoxide catalysts that actually run a biodiesel plant, KM32 and NM30. Additive stock is held worldwide through our supply network, and with ATEX-certified injection equipment a cargo can be treated in a shore tank, on the vessel or at anchorage, including during STS and OPL operations. Where useful we pair that with the theoretical blend calculation and a hand blend tested at a partner laboratory, so the additive is chosen against a measured result rather than a datasheet. On additives we may be your counterparty rather than your broker. Everywhere else on this site we broker: we never take title and we do not trade our own book. Additives are the exception, because here we also buy and sell for our own account. We say which of the two applies before anything is agreed, and it is written into our terms as article 4.7.

Answered on this page

• Can you treat a cargo that is already at sea?
• Are MMT and ferrocene allowed in EU road gasoline?
• Which is cheaper, additive treatment or blending the problem away?
• How do we know the dosage before committing?

We introduce you to a certification body and stay involved through the audit, rather than handing you over at the door. On the two schemes: ISCC EU is for the Renewable Energy Directive, ISCC PLUS for circular and bio-based materials, and picking the wrong one costs you the audit. On what fails an audit in practice, it is almost never the sustainability criteria. It is the mass balance bookkeeping, a certificate whose scope does not cover the product or the activity, and a missing self declaration at the point of origin. What we cannot do is issue certificates ourselves, and neither can any broker.

Answered on this page

• How can I check that a counterparty's ISCC certificate is valid?
• How long does ISCC certification take?
• What happens if the audit finds problems?
• Who actually issues the certificate, ISCC?

Let us be straight: REACH is not our core business. We are a commodity brokerage, not a regulatory consultancy. But REACH decides whether some of what we broker can legally be placed on the EU market, and the question gets asked far too late far too often. Three points cover most situations: waste is outside REACH until end-of-waste; Annex V exempts a list that includes vegetable and animal fats and oils, many fatty acids and glycerol; and pyrolysis oil, as a UVCB, generally is not exempt.

Answered on this page

• Does REACH apply to waste?
• Does pyrolysis oil need REACH registration?
• Is used cooking oil exempt from REACH?
• Is glycerine exempt from REACH registration?

Most demand in these markets is created by law, not by preference. ReFuelEU Aviation obliges fuel suppliers at EU airports to blend 2 % SAF from 2025, 6 % by 2030, 20 % by 2035 and 70 % by 2050, with a separate e-fuel sub-mandate of 1.2 % by 2030. PPWR sets minimum recycled content in packaging from 2030. On the supply side the rules narrow rather than widen: under Regulation (EU) 2024/1157 the EU bans exports of non-hazardous plastic waste to non-OECD countries from 21 November 2026. Demand is legislated up; the pool of legal origins is legislated down.

Answered on this page

• What is the SAF mandate in Europe and when does it step up?
• When does the EU ban plastic waste exports?
• Does the export ban stop me importing feedstock into Europe?
• Which countries can supply used cooking oil to Europe?

We give straight market reads and we do not publish price data. On why: the numbers that matter are assessed by agencies under licence, and republishing them would be both wrong and quickly worthless. On what we can do instead, we tell you how a product is actually quoted, what moves it, and why two quotes for the same material are often not comparable at all. Ask us where something is clearing and you get a read, not a number scraped from somewhere.

Answered on this page

• What is the price of UCO CIF Rotterdam today?
• Why is UCO FOB China sometimes higher than CIF Rotterdam?
• Is there a benchmark price for pyrolysis oil?
• How should I compare two offers from different origins?

We work from the Netherlands with our own brokers in the United Kingdom, Brazil and the Czech Republic, which is why we can open conversations in Portuguese, French, Polish, Czech and Russian as well as English and Dutch. On what that is worth in practice: a producer in Latin America or central Europe reaches a European buyer far faster through someone who speaks the language and knows the certification route than through a translated e-mail.

Answered on this page

• Do you work outside Europe?
• What language do contracts use in this trade?
• What is the first thing that stops a cross-border deal?
• Do trade measures affect what I can sell into Europe?

Do not start by calling oil traders. Almost everyone does, and it is why so many first cargoes go nowhere. What works is four steps in order: prove exactly what your oil is, settle whether it is legally a waste or a product, get certified if you want the premium, and only then approach the buyers whose plant can actually run it. Skip one and you will be asked for it later anyway, usually by the buyer you most wanted to keep. Happy to look at where you are in that sequence if it is useful.

Answered on this page

• How many samples does a serious buyer want before contracting?
• How long does qualification take?
• I want to sell pyrolysis oil in Europe. Who can help?
• Who buys pyrolysis oil in Europe?

Read this first: this is a market map built from public sources, not a client list. Naming a company here says nothing about whether we work with them, and we do not claim to represent any of them. This is a market map, built from what each company has published about its own activity, because "who actually buys pyrolysis oil" is the question we are asked most and there is no honest public answer to it. Knowing who has capacity tells you what specification the market wants, and that is worth more than a list of phone numbers.

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• My pyrolysis oil is not clean enough for a cracker. Is that the end of it?
• Which new pyrolysis capacity is being built in Europe?
• Does ExxonMobil buy pyrolysis oil?
• Who buys pyrolysis oil in Europe?

We cannot issue a safety data sheet under our own name, and you should be wary of any broker who offers to. Under REACH the duty to supply an SDS falls on the supplier, defined as the manufacturer, importer, downstream user or distributor placing the substance on the market. We are a broker: we never take title and we never place product on the market, so we are not the supplier. Section 1.3 of an SDS has to identify the actual supplier and the competent person behind it. Putting our name there would point a reader at the wrong party in an emergency, which is the one thing the document exists to prevent. What we do instead is make sure the producer's SDS is current, complete and in the right language before it reaches a buyer.

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• Can a broker issue a safety data sheet?
• Which sections of a safety data sheet go missing most often?
• What documents does a European buyer ask for before the first cargo?
• Can you provide an MSDS or SDS for the product?

Every number on an assay answers one commercial question. Iodine value tells you how unsaturated a fat is, which decides whether it stays liquid and whether it can legally become FAME: coconut sits around 6 to 11, palm around 50 to 55, rapeseed around 110, sunflower and soybean around 125, and fish oil well above that. FFA tells you how the material was handled. MIU tells you what you are paying for that is not product. Titre tells you whether it will solidify in your tank. This page explains each one, with typical values side by side.

Answered on this page

• What is iodine value and what does it tell you?
• What is the iodine value of palm oil?
• Why is coconut oil solid at room temperature?
• Why can sunflower or soybean oil not simply be made into European biodiesel?

The single most expensive mistake in this trade is agreeing a number without agreeing the method. Chlorine measured by combustion ion chromatography and chlorine measured by a field kit are not the same measurement, and a cargo can pass one and fail the other without anything changing in the tank. Name the method, name the laboratory, and agree in advance who pays for the umpire analysis. Everything below is orientation on which method is normally named for which parameter; the contract governs.

Answered on this page

• How is chlorine measured in pyrolysis oil?
• Is there an ASTM standard for plastic pyrolysis oil?
• What standard does HVO have to meet?
• Which ASTM standard covers SAF?

This page is a blank structure, not a filled in safety data sheet, and not one for any product. A real SDS can only be issued by the supplier: the manufacturer, importer, downstream user or distributor who places the material on the market. We are a broker and never take title, so we are not that party and neither is any other broker. What we can do is show you the shape the document has to have, so you can see at a glance whether the one in your inbox is complete. The format below follows Annex II of REACH as replaced by Commission Regulation (EU) 2020/878, mandatory for every safety data sheet circulating in the EU since 1 January 2023.

Answered on this page

• What regulation sets out the 16 sections?
• Can I use your specimen as my own safety data sheet?
• Who has to provide the safety data sheet in a brokered trade?
• Can I download a blank SDS template?

We link to the official source rather than hosting copies, and you should be suspicious of sites that do the opposite. Scheme documents are updated, sometimes several times a year, and a downloaded copy sitting on a third party website goes stale silently. Someone then files last year's form and finds out at audit. On top of that these are the schemes' own copyrighted documents, and several of the mandatory templates sit in a members' area precisely because they are controlled. So: links to the current version, plus our own explanation of which document does what, which is the part that is genuinely hard to find.

Answered on this page

• What exactly is a Proof of Sustainability?
• What greenhouse gas saving does a biofuel have to show?
• Where do I get the actual PoS template?
• Where can I download an ISCC sustainability declaration template?

You delivered, and the money stopped. Usually the buyer says the quality is off, or a document is wrong, or they simply go quiet. Meanwhile demurrage runs, the cargo sits, and both sides start talking to lawyers who are paid by the hour to disagree. On what we do: we are brought in by sellers AND by buyers to get a stalled trade moving again, including trades we never brokered. We are not lawyers and this is not arbitration. We are commercial people who know what the cargo is actually worth, what the paperwork should say, and what each side can realistically accept. On the clock, which is the part most people miss: you may already be running against a deadline.

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• Are you a member of a trade association?
• I delivered the cargo and the buyer will not pay. What do I do first?
• Can you help if you were not the broker on the trade?
• Is this arbitration or legal advice?

We broker waste-based feedstocks and renewable fuels in both directions. Alongside the collectors and producers who place volume with us stand the industries that take it: steam crackers, refineries, carbon black producers, marine fuel suppliers, aviation, oleochemical plants, feed producers, resin and coatings manufacturers and packaging companies. What is a defect on one side of the trade is a specification on the other: a high sulphur reading rules an oil out of a steam cracker and changes nothing for a fuel blender, and an acid oil priced on total fatty acid is an Annex IX question for a biodiesel plant and a cost question for an oleochemical buyer. This page is written from the buying side. Tell us what your plant runs on and we will tell you honestly which of our suppliers can hold that specification, at what certification, and what a realistic qualification timeline looks like.

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• We are a buyer, not a seller. Can we approach you?
• What do you need from us before you start sourcing?
• Do you quote prices on this website?
• How does qualification of a new supplier run?

Customs classification is one of the quiet deal killers in this trade. The same product can move under several CN headings depending on how it was made, what it is used for and whether the receiving country treats it as a waste or a product, and a reclassification after arrival moves duty, import VAT and energy taxation all at once. We see the same headings come back across our markets, so we have collected them here, product by product, together with the questions that decide between them. Treat the table as orientation: the only binding answers come from your customs authority, ideally in writing through a Binding Tariff Information.

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• We ship the same product every month. Do we need a new BTI each time?
• Why does the same product move under different CN codes?
• Which CN code applies to used cooking oil?
• Which heading does biodiesel move under?

A Proof of Sustainability, called a Sustainability Declaration in the ISCC documents, is the per-consignment document that travels with certified material. The certificate proves the company is in the system; the PoS proves this batch is. It has to reflect the product group actually delivered, carry the GHG figure for the fuel, and place the material in the right Annex IX category, because that category decides whether the buyer can count it at all.

Answered on this page

• What exactly is a Proof of Sustainability?
• What is the difference between a Proof of Sustainability and a certificate?
• What has to be on an ISCC EU delivery note?
• Does the GHG figure have to be on the document?

Certified and non certified material are not the same product at two prices; they are two products with different buyers. Certification exists because fuel suppliers have obligations they can only meet with documented material, so the difference reflects what a buyer can do with it rather than any quality difference. Non certified material is not worthless: it has its own outlets, and for some of them the certification would add nothing.

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• What is the price difference between certified and non certified material?
• Is non certified material harder to sell?
• Will it be certified or non certified?
• My producer is certified, so my cargo is certified. Is that right?

A certificate of analysis is only worth what the sampling behind it is worth. The sample has to be representative of a well mixed batch that nothing is added to afterwards, the laboratory has to be able to run every method in the scope in house, and the methods themselves have to be the ones the buyer screens on. Get those three right and one analysis can cover a whole shore tank batch, which is also how the cost per tonne comes down.

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• What makes a sample representative?
• Can one certificate of analysis cover several isotanks?
• Which laboratory should we use?
• How should chlorine be reported?

Used cooking oil in Europe goes to four kinds of buyer: HVO and renewable diesel refiners, SAF producers running the HEFA route, biodiesel plants making FAME, and integrated collectors who both gather and process. A fourth, smaller outlet is oleochemical and technical use, which does not need a sustainability chain at all. Neste, the largest single buyer, states that waste and residues are around 90% of its global raw material input and that used cooking oil is one of its top three waste categories.

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• Who is the biggest buyer of used cooking oil in Europe?
• Can I sell UCO directly to a refinery?
• What specification do UCO buyers screen on?
• Do I need ISCC to sell UCO in Europe?

POME oil goes to the same European hydrotreaters and biodiesel producers that buy used cooking oil, and it competes for the same processing slots. What makes it a different trade is the classification: POME oil sits on the Annex IX Part A list, which is where its value comes from, and that is exactly why the documentation behind it is scrutinised more heavily than for almost any other feedstock.

Answered on this page

• Who buys POME oil in Europe?
• Is POME oil Annex IX Part A?
• Why is POME scrutinised more than other feedstocks?
• What is the difference between POME oil, SBEO and SSAO?

Animal fat in Europe is bought by biodiesel and HVO producers, by SAF plants on the HEFA route, by oleochemical manufacturers, and by the feed and pet food industry. Which of them can buy from you is decided first by the category. Category 1 and 2 go to fuel and technical uses only; category 3 is the contested one, because all four industries can use it and they are actively bidding against each other.

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• Who buys animal fat in Europe?
• Why is category 3 fat so contested?
• Can category 1 fat be sold at all?
• Do I need ISCC to sell tallow?

Acid oils and soapstock go to two markets in Europe. Biodiesel and HVO producers buy them as an advanced feedstock where the classification supports it; oleochemical manufacturers buy them as a raw material for fatty acids and derivatives. Neste names residues from vegetable oil processing among its top three waste and residue categories. The classification question decides which market you are in, and it is worth settling before anyone quotes.

Answered on this page

• Who buys acid oils in Europe?
• What decides whether acid oil is worth more as fuel or as oleochemical feedstock?
• What is total fatty matter and why does it matter?
• Is soapstock acid oil Annex IX Part A?

ARA stands for Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Antwerp, the three-port corridor that functions as the pricing and physical hub for liquid fuels and waste-based feedstocks in northwest Europe. Most European offers are quoted CIF ARA. The three ports are one price basis but not one market: Rotterdam is the deepwater and refining centre, Amsterdam is heavily weighted towards blending and storage, and Antwerp sits next to the chemical and oleochemical cluster. National implementation of EU rules differs across the Dutch-Belgian border, which can make the same cargo worth different amounts depending on where it discharges.

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• What does CIF ARA mean?
• Which of the three ports should my cargo go to?
• Why does a buyer sometimes insist on one specific port?
• Do I need a European entity to sell into ARA?

eSAF is synthetic aviation fuel made from renewable hydrogen and captured carbon, and under EU rules it counts as a renewable fuel of non-biological origin. ReFuelEU aviation sets a separate sub-mandate for it: 1.2% of aviation fuel supplied at EU airports from 2030, rising to 35% by 2050, alongside the general SAF share of 2% from 2025 and 70% by 2050. That separate quota is the whole reason the product exists commercially, because eSAF cannot compete with HEFA on cost and is not meant to.

Answered on this page

• What is eSAF?
• What is the eSAF mandate in 2030?
• Why is eSAF so much more expensive than HEFA SAF?
• Does HEFA SAF count towards the synthetic sub-mandate?

Marine biofuel is conventional bunker fuel blended with a biogenic component, most commonly FAME, and sold as a blend such as B30, or as a pure biogenic fuel such as B100 FAME or B100 HVO. Demand is driven by FuelEU Maritime and by the cost of emissions under the EU ETS rather than by price advantage. Because member states implement the underlying directives at their own pace, the same blend can have a different compliance value depending on which port it is bunkered in.

Answered on this page

• What does B30 mean?
• What is the difference between B100 FAME and B100 HVO?
• Why would a shipowner pay more for biofuel?
• Does it matter which port I bunker in?

A broker introduces two parties and structures the trade between them; a trader buys and sells for its own account. We are a broker. We never take title to a cargo, never take a price position, and never trade against the parties we work for. The fee is agreed per tonne before any introduction is made, one side pays it, and no deal means no fee. What a broker is worth in this market is the matching itself, waste-based feedstock has no exchange, so buyers and sellers do not find each other by looking, plus keeping counterparties apart until both sides want to meet, and getting the documentation right, because in this trade the paperwork carries as much value as the cargo.

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• What is the difference between a broker and a trader?
• Who pays the brokerage fee?
• Why does waste-based feedstock need brokers when other commodities do not?
• Do you take ownership of the cargo?

REDcert and ISCC are both voluntary schemes recognised by the European Commission under the Renewable Energy Directive, so in principle a compliant consignment is compliant under either. In practice the buyer decides. Many European refiners are set up for ISCC EU, some accept REDcert-EU without question, and a few will only take one. That is a commercial position, not a legal one, and it is the single most useful thing to establish before you talk about price. Three names get mixed up: REDcert-EU is the European scheme for RED compliance, REDcert-DE serves the German national requirements, and REDcert² covers material in the chemical and material chain rather than fuel. A certificate under one of them says nothing about the others.

Answered on this page

• Is REDcert the same as ISCC?
• Will a European refiner accept REDcert-EU material?
• What is the difference between REDcert-EU, REDcert-DE and REDcert2?
• Can material move from REDcert to ISCC or the other way round?

Nabisy is the German database for sustainability proof, run by the BLE. Anyone claiming biofuel against the German greenhouse gas quota needs the proof to exist in Nabisy, which means somebody in the chain must be registered and must issue the Nachweis there. For a supplier outside Germany this usually means your German counterparty does the entering, but they can only do it if what you send them is complete. Three things get asked for over and over: the biomass code for the product, an example of an earlier Nachweis so the buyer can see the format, and confirmation of who the seller of record is. If you can answer those three, the German route is usually straightforward. If you cannot, it stops there regardless of how good the material is.

Answered on this page

• What is Nabisy?
• What is a Nabisy biomass code?
• Do I need to register in Nabisy myself if I am not in Germany?
• A buyer asked for an example of a previous Nabisy proof. Is that normal?

On 1 January 2026 the Netherlands moved from an energy based obligation to a greenhouse gas based one. The annual obligation (jaarverplichting) became the fuel transition obligation (brandstoftransitieverplichting), and the tradeable unit changed from the HBE, which counted renewable energy delivered, to the ERE, where one unit represents one kilogram of avoided CO2. The Nederlandse Emissieautoriteit supervises it through the Register Energie Vervoer. For anyone selling feedstock into this market the practical consequence is direct: the GHG figure on your proof of sustainability now translates into units, and two cargoes with the same specification and different GHG values are no longer worth the same here.

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• What is an ERE?
• What happened to the HBE?
• Does this change what my UCO is worth in the Netherlands?
• Do shipping fuel suppliers now have an obligation?

The Union Database exists so that a litre of renewable fuel can be traced across the European Union without being counted twice. Under the Renewable Energy Directive, economic operators record consignments and transfers in it, so that a volume claimed in one member state cannot also be claimed in another. It does not replace your scheme certification: you still need ISCC, REDcert or another recognised scheme, and the database records what that certification supports. The rollout has been phased and the detail differs by member state and by fuel type, so the useful preparation is not to memorise a deadline but to make sure your own records can survive being matched against somebody else's, consistent quantities, consistent feedstock categories, and a defensible greenhouse gas figure at every transfer.

Answered on this page

• What is the Union Database?
• Does the Union Database replace ISCC or REDcert?
• What do I have to do to prepare?
• What are the requirements for UDB in an HVO supply chain?

A price means nothing without the basis it sits on. EXW is the material at the seller's gate and nothing else. FOB adds getting it to the load port and on board, and the risk passes there. CIF adds sea freight and insurance to a named discharge port, but not discharge, duty or delivery inland. DAP goes further: the seller carries it to a named place, usually the buyer's tank or refinery gate, with import clearance still on the buyer. In waste-based feedstock, CIF ARA is the working reference for Europe because that is where the demand and the published assessments sit; an origin like FOB Brazil or EXW at a mill is what a seller usually starts from. The gap between those two numbers is freight, insurance and the cost of getting to the ship, and it is where most misunderstandings live. The official definitions are the ICC's Incoterms® rules; what follows is what they mean in practice for these cargoes.

Answered on this page

• What is the difference between FOB and CIF?
• What do I add to an EXW price to make it FOB?
• What does CIF include, and what does it not?
• Why is CIF ARA the price everyone quotes?

Before a refiner or trading house will contract with a new counterparty, it runs you through onboarding, and until that clears, nothing moves. In practice it is a document pack: company registration and ownership, VAT and tax identifiers, bank details confirmed by the bank rather than by email, identification of the people who own and sign for the company, a sanctions and adverse-media screen, and for this trade the certification and licences that cover what you are selling. Expect it to take weeks rather than days at a large buyer, and expect it to run alongside the commercial conversation instead of after it. The single most useful thing you can do is have the pack assembled before anyone asks: the delays we see are almost never refusals, they are a missing document and a person on holiday. Once you are through at one major, say so, being cleared elsewhere is a real reference and counterparties treat it as one.

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• What documents do I need for KYC as a supplier?
• How long does onboarding take at a large buyer?
• Can I start trading while KYC is still running?
• Why does the buyer want to know who owns my company?

The EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) applies from 30 December 2026 for large and medium operators, and from 30 June 2027 for micro and small ones. It covers cattle, cocoa, coffee, oil palm, rubber, soya and wood, and a long list of derived products. For our markets the practical question is palm: palm oil and products made directly from it, such as PFAD, are in scope, while genuine waste and residue streams such as used cooking oil are not. The cut-off date is 31 December 2020: material from land deforested after that date cannot enter the EU at all, whatever the paperwork says. If you trade palm-derived feedstocks, you need the geolocation of the plots and a due diligence statement in the chain; if you trade UCO or tallow, you mainly need to be able to show the material is what it claims to be.

Answered on this page

• Does the EUDR apply to used cooking oil?
• Is PFAD in scope of the EUDR?
• We are a small company. Do we get the 2027 date?
• What happens if the paperwork is missing at the border?

European crude tall oil is bought by a short list of players: fractional distillers who split it into tall oil fatty acids (TOFA), distilled tall oil (DTO), rosin and pitch; tall-diesel plants that turn it into renewable fuel; and rosin-chemistry producers who consume the derivatives. The distilling capacity sits concentrated in Finland and Sweden, close to the Nordic kraft mills that produce the crude. That concentration is the practical fact of this market: a handful of real buyers, long relationships, and price talk built around the fatty-acid/rosin split rather than a single benchmark. If you sell CTO, you are not looking for a market, you are looking for the right two or three names for your specific crude -- and that is what we do all day.

Answered on this page

• Can a pulp mill outside Scandinavia sell crude tall oil into Europe?
• Is crude tall oil priced off a public benchmark?
• Does crude tall oil count as a waste-based feedstock?
• What is the difference between crude and distilled tall oil?

RED III, the EU Renewable Energy Directive, keeps waste oils and animal fats in a capped box. Feedstocks in Annex IX Part B -- used cooking oil, categories 1 and 2 animal fats -- count toward a member state's renewable transport target, but only up to 1.7% of transport energy per country, with the option for a member state to ask the Commission to raise its cap. At the same time the directive raises the overall transport target to 29% renewable energy by 2030 (or a 14.5% greenhouse-gas-intensity reduction) and sets a combined sub-target of 5.5% for advanced biofuels and RFNBOs, including a binding 1% RFNBO share. The practical effect for a seller: demand for Part B material stays strong but is structurally capped, while the growth premium sits with Part A feedstocks -- and with the national implementation choices that each member state is making right now.

Answered on this page

• Does RED III ban used cooking oil as a feedstock?
• What is double counting?
• Has RED III been implemented everywhere?
• Which feedstocks are in Annex IX Part B?

European waste PET is bought by three groups: integrated bottle-to-bottle recyclers who turn hot-washed flake into food-grade rPET pellets for their own preform production; independent recyclers and traders moving flake and pellets to converters; and polyester fibre producers who take washed flake as feedstock. The anchor buyers are names like ALPLA, whose PET Recycling Team runs food-grade capacity across Europe including a 54,000 tonne-per-year plant in Poland, and Plastipak, which is building flake-to-food-grade rPET capacity in Spain. What they pay for is not "PET" but a specification: colour, PVC and glue residues, moisture, and IV (intrinsic viscosity). A washed, single-colour flake with low PVC is a different business from a mixed bale -- and since the recycled-content rules tightened, it is the former that is in shortage.

Answered on this page

• Do buyers take mixed bales or only sorted?
• Is hot-washed flake always food grade?
• Why did my flake get rejected on PVC?
• What is rPET worth right now?

European crude glycerine is bought by glycerine refiners and oleochemical plants, biogas operators -- especially in Belgium and the Netherlands -- and animal feed compounders, with biodiesel producers who refine in-house (such as Argent Energy with its technical-grade refinery) increasingly on both sides of the trade. What decides which door is open is not the word "glycerine" but three numbers: glycerol content, methanol, and ash / MONG. Refiners generally want 80%+ glycerol with low methanol and salt; biogas plants tolerate a rougher crude but price it as a substrate; feed has its own purity rules. Europe takes roughly a third of world glycerine output, and after the price cycle of recent years buyers are selective: a well-specified crude sells, a vague one does not.

Answered on this page

• Can I sell glycerine below 80% glycerol?
• Does waste-based glycerine earn a premium?
• Why do refiners reject high-methanol crude?
• Is refined glycerine worth producing myself?

European waste plastics are bought by two camps that increasingly compete for the same tonnes: mechanical recyclers, who want sorted single-polymer fractions, and chemical-recycling plants, who want mixed polyolefin feed to turn into pyrolysis oil and back into plastics. Around them sit the big waste groups (Veolia, SUEZ, Paprec, Morssinkhof, Mueller-Guttenbrunn) with their own sorting and recycling capacity, and the chemical side -- Plastic Energy, Eni Versalis with its Hoop plants, ExxonMobil and INEOS -- building outlets for mixed plastic waste. The sorting step decides which camp your material belongs to: a clean PP or PE stream is mechanical-recycling business; a washed mixed polyolefin fraction is chemical-recycling feed; an unsorted dirty mix is, honestly, an energy-recovery conversation. Prices across those three outcomes differ more than most sellers expect.

Answered on this page

• Can I still export mixed plastic waste outside Europe?
• Why is PVC such a problem in every stream?
• Is chemical recycling better paid than mechanical?
• What should a first offer to a buyer contain?

European biodiesel is bought by obligated fuel suppliers -- the oil majors and wholesalers who must meet renewable-energy and GHG mandates -- plus the trading community around the ARA barge hub and industrial users outside road fuel. The mandate decides the grade: waste-based UCOME (from used cooking oil) and TME (from animal fats) count toward the targets buyers are legally bound to hit, with double counting where the member state allows it, while crop-based RME sits under the food-and-feed cap. Two practical walls shape every deal: the B7 limit in the diesel standard, which caps how much FAME the road pool can physically absorb, and the 7%-or-2020-share cap on conventional biofuels. Send feedstock, EN 14214 status and proof of sustainability with the offer -- without those, a buyer cannot even price the cargo.

Answered on this page

• Is UCOME worth more than RME?
• Can I sell biodiesel without a proof of sustainability?
• Why do buyers talk about a blend wall?
• What moves FAME prices?

European HVO is bought by obligated fuel suppliers meeting greenhouse-gas quotas -- Germany's quota step-up to 12% in 2026 is the single biggest demand driver -- plus HVO100 fleet users, aviation fuel buyers under ReFuelEU and marine buyers under FuelEU Maritime. Market watchers expect EU renewable diesel demand to grow by roughly 2.5 million tonnes across 2026, and German consumption alone is estimated around 0.65 million tonnes next year. The flip side is feedstock: with waste and residue supply short by an estimated several million tonnes, a cargo's value is set less by its chemistry than by what it was made from and what paperwork proves it. Sell feedstock (UCO, tallow, acid oils) into that gap, or sell finished HVO with a certificate chain -- those are the two ways into this buyer list.

Answered on this page

• Is HVO the same as biodiesel?
• Why does feedstock matter so much for HVO price?
• Can small feedstock suppliers sell into HVO plants?
• What is HEFA and what does it have to do with HVO?

European fusel oil is bought by flavour-and-fragrance processors who isolate the amyl alcohols, by chemical companies using it as a solvent and intermediate, and by blenders into industrial, agro and feed applications. The material is a by-product of ethanol and spirits fermentation -- mostly isoamyl alcohol with propanol, butanol, ethanol and water -- and its value tracks one thing: the GC breakdown. A cargo rich in isoamyl alcohol feeds the fragrance chain (where the value is); a watery, ethanol-heavy mix sells as cheap solvent feed at a discount. Freight is the second gate: fusel oil moves in modest parcels, so distance to the buyer eats margin faster than in bulk liquids. Send the analysis with the offer, because buyers price the composition, not the word "fusel".

Answered on this page

• What is fusel oil worth?
• Can a small distillery sell its fusel oil?
• Is fusel oil a waste?
• Why do buyers keep asking for the GC?

European CNSL is bought by friction-material producers (brake linings, clutch facings and friction dust -- the largest outlet for technical grade), by processors who convert it into cardanol for resins, coatings and surfactants, and by specialty polymer and laminate chemistry. Two grades run through the market: technical CNSL, extracted from the shell by decortication and priced for volume applications, and natural CNSL (cold-pressed), valued where composition matters for cardanol recovery. The market is growing steadily -- analysts put it in the 7-11% range per year -- and Europe is served through a trader-distributor layer (for example Equilex) plus direct contracts. What a buyer pays for is the composition: anacardic acid, cardol and cardanol content decide whether your cargo is friction feedstock or cardanol raw material.

Answered on this page

• What is the difference between technical and natural CNSL?
• Is CNSL the same as cashew nut oil?
• Why do friction makers like CNSL?
• Can small origin producers sell into Europe?

European bionaphtha is bought by two camps: petrochemical crackers that feed it in under ISCC PLUS mass balance to sell bio-attributed polymers, and gasoline blenders who value its paraffinic, sulphur-free octane. The names on the cracking side are the big European crackers -- INEOS (running tall-oil based bio-naphtha at certified German sites), BASF with its biomass-balanced products, Borealis, LyondellBasell, SABIC and TotalEnergies -- and the supply side counts Neste NExBTL, Topsoe HydroFlex output and every HVO plant with a naphtha co-product. The commercial heart of the market: the certificate, not the hydrocarbon, carries the value. Physically, bio-naphtha cracks like naphtha; commercially, open-spec material trades near fossil parity while certified renewable grades command multiples of it. Sell the molecule without the chain of custody and you leave most of the money on the table.

Answered on this page

• Can I sell bionaphtha without certification?
• Why do crackers buy bio-naphtha instead of just buying certificates?
• Is bionaphtha the same as pyrolysis oil?
• What does a first offer to a cracker need?

Selling used cooking oil in Europe comes down to five steps: secure the collection rights, get the waste status and paperwork right, aggregate to a shippable volume, certify the sustainability chain, and then sell -- by analysis, not by story. UCO is an Annex IX Part B feedstock under the Renewable Energy Directive, which is why biodiesel and HVO plants pay a premium for it: it counts toward their obligations, double counting applies in several countries. That same status is why the paperwork matters -- a cargo without documented waste origin and a proof of sustainability sells as feedstock at a discount, not as compliance material. The buyers exist and are hungry; what separates a good UCO business from a struggling one is almost never the oil -- it is the intake documentation, the consistency of the analysis and the volume pattern.

Answered on this page

• Do I need a license to collect used cooking oil?
• How much is my used cooking oil worth?
• Can restaurants sell their own oil?
• Is UCO affected by the EUDR?

Since 21 May 2026, cross-border waste movements in the EU run under the new Regulation (EU) 2024/1157: procedures go through the digital system DIWASS, exports of waste for disposal are banned outright, and exports for recovery outside the OECD face real scrutiny. For feedstock trade the regulation matters in three places. First, the waste-or-product question: if your stream is legally waste, the shipment regime applies in full; if it is a product with a specification and a buyer, it does not -- and that classification is a paperwork question before it is a chemistry one. Second, the green list: most clean, single-stream recyclables (including typical used cooking oil movements) move under green-listed procedures, which are lighter than full notification but still documented -- and since May 2026, digitally. Third, plastics: the Basel amendments and the new regulation together make mixed, contaminated plastic exports to non-OECD countries effectively impossible, which is why European mixed plastic now sells to European buyers.

Answered on this page

• Does the regulation apply to used cooking oil?
• My material is processed and has a buyer -- is it still waste?
• What is DIWASS in one sentence?
• Can we still export waste plastics outside the EU?

Selling animal fats in Europe starts with one question: which ABP category is it? Under the animal by-products regulation (EC) No 1069/2009, rendered fat is category 1, 2 or 3, and that single fact decides your buyer list. Category 1 and 2 fats (from specified risk material, fallen stock and similar) go to technical and fuel outlets -- biodiesel, HVO, oleochemistry -- and count double toward renewable obligations, which is why fuel plants pay for them. Category 3 fat (from material fit for human consumption at slaughter) has two competing markets: animal feed, its traditional home, and biofuel, its hungry new one -- a competition the feed industry is publicly unhappy about. After the category, the same three things decide everything as in every fat trade: the certificate chain, the analysis (FFA, MIU, sulphur), and volume continuity. Sell with all three in the file and category 1 fat outprices what most sellers expect; sell without them and even category 3 trades at a discount.

Answered on this page

• Which animal fat is worth more, category 1 or category 3?
• Can category 3 fat go into fuel?
• What documents does a fat cargo need?
• Why did my tallow price drop?

Selling POME oil into Europe is a documentation exercise wrapped around a commodity: ISCC treats palm oil mill effluent as a processing residue, and everything a European buyer pays for flows from that classification being watertight. The chain runs mill (point of origin) to collecting point to trader to EU importer, and every link needs to be certified. That bar rose deliberately: the industry has seen misdeclared palm fractions sold as POME, and ISCC responded with tighter audits on palm-based waste streams -- which sounds like bad news for sellers but is the opposite for honest ones: every fraudulent stream that exits the market makes yours scarcer and your paperwork more valuable. Bring the mill's own documentation (not a trader's summary), a consistent analysis (FFA, moisture, impurities), and a volume pattern a buyer can plan on, and POME sells into European biodiesel and renewable diesel plants at residue-grade value.

Answered on this page

• Can a trader certify POME without the mill?
• Why are POME audits stricter than before?
• What is the difference between POME, SBEO and SSAO?
• Is POME affected by the EU deforestation rules?

Selling acid oils in Europe is a two-step commercial story: turn the soapstock into acid oil, and settle what the parent oil means for classification. Acid oil comes from acidulating soapstock -- the gum-and-soap by-product of vegetable oil refining split into free fatty acids and glycerides -- and it prices on total fatty acid content (TFA), with moisture, impurities and the unsaponifiable fraction as discount drivers. The strategic question is the parent oil: the origin material determines how the stream sits under the renewable energy rules, and with palm-linked streams, what the deforestation rules ask (our EUDR page covers that line). The buyer list is broad -- biodiesel and renewable diesel plants hungry for high-FFA feed, oleochemicals running fatty acid chemistry, and limited feed outlets -- and since price reporting agencies launched dedicated soapstock acid oil assessments, the stream trades as a named commodity rather than a refinery afterthought.

Answered on this page

• What is acid oil worth?
• Should I esterify before selling?
• Does the EUDR apply to my acid oil?
• Can soapstock be sold as-is?

The twelve months around 2026 are the densest regulatory period this trade has ever had. Waste shipment procedures went digital and disposal exports were banned in May 2026. Packaging rules apply from 12 August 2026. The deforestation regulation lands on 30 December 2026 for large operators, June 2027 for small ones. And the renewable quota steps that reprice every cargo took effect from January. This page puts those dates in one table, in the order they hit, each linked to the page that explains what to do about it. Book it, revisit it: the table is maintained by a desk that trades under these rules daily, not scraped from a consultant's newsletter.

Answered on this page

• Which of these dates matters most for UCO sellers?
• I missed the May 2026 waste shipment changes. What do I do now?
• Does the PPWR date affect feedstock sellers or only packaging makers?
• Is this table maintained?

This glossary translates the terms that decide money in waste-based feedstock trade: what FFA does to a UCO price, what mass balance really claims, why Annex IX Part A versus Part B is worth knowing before you sell, and what a proof of sustainability actually proves. Definitions are written commercially, not legally: each says what the term means and what it does to your cargo. Where a deep page exists, the term links to it. If a word in your analysis or contract is not here, that is a gap worth reporting -- the desk answers.

Answered on this page

• Why do buyers discount on MIU?
• Is double counting still available?
• What is the difference between ISCC EU and ISCC PLUS?
• Who checks that a glossary like this is right?