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

• Where can I buy a pyrolysis machine?
• Can pyrolysis oil be upgraded at a third-party plant?
• What is pyrolysis naphtha?
• Does pyrolysis oil need antioxidant treatment?

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.

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• Should we pyrolyse our own plastics?
• Can plastics be sold by container to Europe?
• What is a tipping fee versus a sale price?
• Can agricultural plastics mix with household?

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.

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• What Bale quality signals professionalism?
• Can PET flake be sold unwashed?
• What is the difference between bottle and tray PET?
• Can PET be sold during price collapses?

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.

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• Can food-grade surplus be sold into fuel markets?
• What phosphorus level matters in technical oils?
• Is vegetable oil trading regulated like waste oils?
• Can I sell crude vegetable oil without refining?

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

• Can UCO be sold in intermediate bulk containers?
• What is a waste transfer note?
• What is the most common UCO fraud?
• Can UCO be sold during collection disputes?

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 FFA is too high for fuel buyers?
• Can tallow be sold without a renderer in the chain?
• What is the winter behaviour of tallow?
• Do biodiesel plants prefer cat 1 or cat 3?

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.

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• Can POME be sold at the mill gate in bulk?
• What impurities matter in POME?
• Is POME pricing transparent?
• Can POME supply be interrupted by regulation?

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

• Can SBE itself be sold, not just the oil?
• What is the oil yield from bleaching earth?
• Is SBEO a niche or a real market?
• Can SBEO certification follow the parent oil?

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.

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• Can FAME be sold without a proof of sustainability?
• What monoglyceride level matters?
• Is FAME a commodity or a specification product?
• Can FAME be sold between traders indefinitely?

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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• Can small producers sell into this family?
• What is the family's feedstock pecking order?
• How do the three markets share one plant?
• Is the family converging with petrochemicals?

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

• What is general average in cargo terms?
• Can off-spec cargo be re-certified after treatment?
• What is salvage value in fuels?
• How do insurers treat biofuel claims?

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.

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• What is a survey report's evidentiary value?
• Can claims be insured against?
• What is arbitration in fuel disputes?
• How long do quality disputes usually last?

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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• What machine makes plastic pyrolysis oil?
• Can PPO be sold while the plant is optimising?
• What fraction of PPO sells best?
• Which single test decides PPO's buyer list?

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.

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• What machine makes tyre pyrolysis oil?
• Can TPO be sold without desulphurisation?
• What zinc level matters in TPO?
• Is there a TPO spot market?

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.

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• Can rCB be sold without pelletising?
• What ash level suits rubber applications?
• Is rCB a globally traded commodity yet?
• Can rCB production be profitable at small scale?

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.

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• Who buys recovered carbon black?
• Who buys rCB in Germany?
• Who buys rCB in Italy?
• Who buys rCB in France?

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.

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• Can a scope be suspended without warning?
• How do scope codes map to waste streams?
• Can one certificate cover multiple sites?
• What is a self-declaration versus third-party evidence?

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.

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• Can one feedstock make several fuels?
• What feedstock makes SAF specifically?
• Which fuels accept the lowest grades?
• What is feedstock flexibility worth?

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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• Can small volumes of feedstock reach HVO plants?
• What is the difference between HVO feedstock grades?
• Which analysis matters most to HVO intake?
• Can HVO feedstock be sold forward?

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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• Can I sell feedstock specifically for SAF?
• What makes SAF due diligence different?
• Is SAF traded spot?
• What feedstocks work for SAF besides waste oil?

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

• Can bionaphtha be sold without a cracker relationship?
• What is mass balance in plain words?
• Can one cargo carry fuel and chemical claims?
• What is the smallest bionaphtha lot a cracker takes?

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

• What is a cap on Part B in numbers?
• Can Annex IX feedstock lose status?
• Is molasses or starch Part A?
• What is advanced biofuel in one sentence?

Buying a pyrolysis plant fails or succeeds on two decisions: which machine you buy and who buys the oil. The machine decides your specification, the specification decides your market, and the market decides whether the project repays. Pyrolysis machines from China dominate the market on price, from small batch plants at tens of thousands of dollars to continuous lines approaching half a million, and the equipment can be excellent, but the oil a reactor makes is only worth what its analysis says. This guide is the only independent pyrolysis machine buying guide on the web: every other guide you will find is published by a machine seller. Read the red flags section before you pay any deposit: if a supplier cannot show you oil analyses from running plants and references you can call, they are selling you a reactor, not a business. Then arrange the oil buyer before you order the machine, because that is the decision that decides whether the project repays.

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• How do I avoid pyrolysis machine scams?
• What are the red flags when buying a pyrolysis plant?
• Can I trust pyrolysis machine reviews online?
• Why do some pyrolysis plants fail?

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.

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• What waste streams qualify as RCF feedstocks?
• Can RCF status be claimed without certification?
• How do RCFs interact with plastic recycling targets?
• What is the RCF market's geography?

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

• Glycerine, glycerin or glycerol -- same thing?
• At what temperature does glycerine freeze?
• Is glycerine flammable?
• What salt level is too high for refiners?

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 water content is too high for fusel buyers?
• Can fusel oil be distilled on site?
• Is fusel oil dangerous goods?
• What is the fusel market's price driver?

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.

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• What is a custody transfer?
• How is tank cleaning certified?
• Can feedstocks share a tank?
• What is demurrage in layman's terms?

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.

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• What is a mass balance period?
• Can co-processing use pyrolysis oil?
• What is the renewable share's price?
• Do co-processed fuels need blending?

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

• What oxidation level stops a fish oil sale?
• Can fish oil be sold at port immediately?
• Is fish oil biodiesel's competitor or complement?
• What species restrictions exist in fish oil trade?

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 water level is acceptable in CTO?
• Can CTO be sold by the railcar?
• What is tall oil soap?
• Is CTO affected by paper industry decline?

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

• What moisture level matters in CNSL?
• Can CNSL be sold as technical grade only?
• Is CNSL processing hazardous?
• What is the CNSL market's size?

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 methanol residue matters in esterified oils?
• Can esterified oil be sold as biodiesel?
• What glycerine byproduct comes from esterification?
• How does esterified oil flow in winter?

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.

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• Can you source from conflict regions?
• What is counterparty risk in cross-border trade?
• How do you vet new counterparties?
• Can small countries access these markets?

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

• What dosage calculation happens before treatment?
• Can additives be supplied on technical support terms?
• What is the shelf life of fuel additives?
• Can off-spec blending be pre-modelled?

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.

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• Can certification be done remotely?
• What is a non-conformity in an audit?
• How do I choose between certification bodies?
• Does ISCC apply to storage terminals?

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

• What is a safety data sheet's legal role under REACH?
• Can REACH apply to waste-derived fuels?
• What is a dossier under REACH?
• Does REACH cover imported mixtures?

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 happens to feedstock prices in 2030?
• Can technology change the feedstock equation?
• What is the SAF pull on household waste oils?
• Do feedstock shortages mean buyer competition?

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 a bid-offer spread telling you?
• How do futures markets relate to physical?
• What is netback pricing?
• Can an index be wrong?

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

• What is trade finance in feedstock flows?
• Can brokers assist with disputes across borders?
• What is a force majeure clause doing in feedstock contracts?
• How do currency fluctuations affect these trades?

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.

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• How to sell pyrolysis oil in Europe?
• Should I buy my own pyrolysis plant?
• What does exclusive representation cost or earn?
• Can plant downtime be covered contractually?

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.

Answered on this page

• Who buys pyrolysis oil?
• I am buying a pyrolysis plant. Can you already help?
• Can pyrolysis oil be sold in batches from storage?
• What is pyrolysis oil's market maturity?

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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• What is document control?
• Can one document serve multiple cargoes?
• What is an audit trail in trade documents?
• How are documents verified for authenticity?

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 pour point versus cloud point?
• What is total acid number?
• What is calorific value?
• What is distillation curve?

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

• What is method validation in a laboratory?
• Can old analyses represent new cargoes?
• What is matrix interference in testing?
• How are disputed methods arbitrated?

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 is a workplace exposure limit?
• What is transport information on an SDS?
• What is ecological information on an SDS?
• Can SDS language vary by country?

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 documents survive an audit?
• Can digital signatures replace wet ink?
• What is a document register?
• How do documents transfer at sale?

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.

Answered on this page

• Can mediation be enforced across borders?
• What is without prejudice communication?
• How are mediators chosen?
• What disputes suit mediation best?

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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• Do you supply data centre generators?
• Can you supply asphalt or bitumen applications?
• Do shipping lines buy feedstock through you?
• Can you serve agricultural cooperatives?

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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• What is the TARIC?
• Can classification affect duty drawback?
• What is a customs warehouse in feedstock trade?
• Do certificates accompany customs declarations?

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.

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• What is a sustainability declaration versus a PoS?
• Can PoS volume be split across buyers?
• What is an erroneous PoS worth?
• Do PoS documents expire with the certificate?

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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• How does a buyer verify my certification claims?
• What is certificate laundering?
• Can certification costs be shared?
• What is the certification market's direction?

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 is a composite sample?
• Can samples be mailed internationally?
• What is sampling bias?
• Who stores the retention sample?

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 buys used cooking oil?
• Can I import UCO into the EU?
• What import duties apply to used cooking oil?
• Who buys UCO in Poland?

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.

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• Who buys POME?
• Can I import POME oil into the EU?
• What duties apply to importing POME?
• Who buys POME in Spain?

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 fats?
• Can I import animal fat into the EU?
• What import rules apply to tallow from outside the EU?
• Which animal fat category sells best?

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.

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• Who buys acid oils?
• Can I import acid oils into the EU?
• What duties apply to acid oil imports?
• Who buys acid oil in Poland?

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 is a blending operation at a terminal?
• Can cargo be sold while in ARA storage?
• What is a customs bonded tank?
• How deep is ARA's biofuel infrastructure?

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.

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• What is a power purchase agreement's role in eSAF?
• Can eSAF plants sell CO2 utilization?
• What is certified green hydrogen in eSAF?
• How do eSAF offtakes get financed?

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.

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• What is a pooling arrangement under FuelEU?
• Can biofuel bunkers be sampled by authorities?
• What is a fuelEU penalty in practice?
• Do biofuels count double in maritime?

This page lists the primary sources behind the answers on this site, and the industry organisations we are part of or rely on. We link to regulations on EUR-Lex, certification schemes at their own documents, market references where they exist, and the associations that structure this trade. If you are a counterparty, association or directory that links to us, we return the link here, that is how the trade has always worked.

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• Why does a broker publish its sources?
• Can our organisation be listed here?
• What is GROFOR and why is it on this page?
• Do you accept sponsored links?

Bart van den Brug is the founder and broker of Sustainable Commodities 3 B.V., an independent brokerage in waste-based feedstocks, renewable fuels and recycled polymers based in Lemmer, the Netherlands. The desk works both sides of the trade, collectors and producers placing volume, refiners, crackers and plants sourcing it, and is paid on business that concludes. He is a member of GROFOR, the German association of wholesale traders in oils, fats and oil raw materials, founded in 1916, which publishes standard trading conditions and runs its own arbitration tribunal. The site you are reading is his market knowledge base, written from the desk that places the cargo, not from a content agency.

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• Can I call the broker directly?
• What languages does the desk work in?
• Is Sustainable Commodities a trader or a broker?
• What is GROFOR and why does it matter?

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 a mandate in brokerage?
• How do brokers price their service?
• Can brokers hold deposits?
• What makes a market illiquid?

A broker earns a commission by making buyers compete for your cargo, and the margin comes from four places that have nothing to do with the commission: more bidders on the same cargo, the buyer whose specification fits yours exactly, paperwork that survives compliance, and term structure instead of spot luck. A first-time seller in this trade typically loses more money on classification, documentation and failed cargoes than on price, and a single-buyer relationship caps what any cargo can clear. A broker is paid only when business concludes -- which is the alignment, and also the limit of what a broker is.

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• Why use a commodity broker instead of selling directly?
• Is a broker worth it for small volumes?
• Who pays the broker, the buyer or the seller?
• Are you liable if the counterparty does not perform?

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.

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• Can REDcert audits be combined with ISO?
• What is REDcert's role in Germany specifically?
• How does REDcert handle new waste streams?
• Can REDcert certificates be verified online?

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.

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• What is a German sustainability declaration's timing?
• Can Nabisy codes be pre-verified?
• What happens to Nabisy under UDB evolution?
• Who audits Nabisy bookkeeping?

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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• How does ERE interact with FuelEU for Dutch bunkers?
• Can foreign material earn ERE value?
• What is an emission factor in ERE terms?
• How liquid is ERE compliance trading?

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.

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• What is a UDB transaction?
• Can UDB errors be appealed?
• Does the UDB cover imports?
• What training does UDB compliance need?

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.

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• What is FCA in one sentence?
• Who bears theft risk under CIF?
• Can delivery terms be changed after contract?
• What does DAP exclude almost always?

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 is KYC in commodity trading?
• How long does counterparty onboarding take?
• Can beneficial owners hide behind shells?
• What is a sanctions list check?

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.

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• What is the EUDR cutoff date?
• Can smallholders comply with EUDR?
• What is a due diligence statement?
• Does EUDR drive premiums for clean origins?

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.

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• Who buys crude tall oil?
• Can I import crude tall oil into the EU?
• What duties apply to tall oil imports?
• Who buys tall oil in Finland?

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.

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• What is the transport target?
• Can caps be traded between countries?
• What is a multiplier in RED terms?
• Does RED III affect heating fuels?

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.

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• Who buys waste PET?
• Can I import PET bales or flake into the EU?
• What import standards apply to rPET?
• Who buys rPET in France?

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.

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• Who buys glycerine?
• Can I import crude glycerine into the EU?
• What duties apply to glycerine imports?
• Who buys glycerine in France?

Selling waste plastics into pyrolysis comes down to four things: sort toward polyolefins, keep the chlorine out, get the waste status and paperwork right, and sell by composition and tonnage rather than by bale count. Pyrolysis plants make oil from LDPE, LLDPE, HDPE and PP, and the oil yield of a clean polyolefin input is typically 60 to 85 percent, which is why such input is worth real money and why buyers screen hard on what else is in the bale. The single number that ends most conversations is chlorine, because it comes almost entirely from PVC, corrodes the plant and ends up in the oil. The buyers exist and are hungry; what separates material that places well from material that keeps being rejected is sorting discipline, dry weight honesty and documentation that says what the material is and where it came from.

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• How to sell waste plastics in Europe?
• Should I buy a pyrolysis machine for my plastics?
• What is an offtake agreement in plastics?
• Can plastics sales be indexed to polymer prices?

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.

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• Who buys waste plastics?
• Can I import waste plastics into the EU?
• What rules govern plastic imports for recycling?
• Who buys waste plastics in Italy?

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.

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• Who buys biodiesel?
• Can I import biodiesel into the EU?
• What duties apply to FAME imports?
• Who buys biodiesel in Poland?

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.

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• Who buys HVO?
• Can I import HVO into the EU?
• What duties apply to HVO imports?
• Who buys HVO in France?

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".

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• Who buys fusel oil?
• Who buys fusel oil in Germany?
• Can I sell fusel oil to the UK?
• Who buys fusel oil in France?

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.

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• Who buys cashew nut shell liquid?
• Can I import CNSL into the EU?
• What duties apply to CNSL imports?
• Who buys CNSL in Germany?

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

• Who buys bionaphtha?
• Can I import bionaphtha into the EU?
• What duties apply to bionaphtha imports?
• Who buys bionaphtha in Germany?

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

• How to sell used cooking oil in Europe?
• Do I need a broker to sell used cooking oil?
• Where can I sell used cooking oil in Europe?
• How much is used cooking oil worth?

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

• What is an economically sound operation?
• Can waste shipments be inspected anywhere?
• What is financial guarantee for waste?
• Do waste rules apply to samples?

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

• How to sell animal fats in Europe?
• Can renderer cooperatives sell jointly?
• What is a category 3 premium clause?
• What payment terms suit tallow trades?

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

• How to sell POME in Europe?
• Can mill contracts include technology support?
• What is a POME quality bonus clause?
• Can POME be sold alongside mill byproducts?

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

• How to sell acid oils in Europe?
• Can glycerine pretreat a high-FFA feedstock?
• Can refineries sell acid oil continuously?
• What is an acid oil price review formula?

Exporting used cooking oil from India to Europe is a documentation chain that starts at the Indian collection point, not at the port: European buyers pay residue-grade value only when the ISCC EU chain, the point-of-origin declarations and the analysis all line up behind the cargo. India is one of the largest UCO sources in Asia -- its cooking-oil consumption scale, and the FSSAI ecosystem that registers collectors and aggregators under the RUCO programme, produce exportable volume. The European side pays for three things: the certificate chain (ISCC EU from the Indian collecting point through to the importer), a consistent analysis (FFA, moisture and impurities), and volume a buyer can plan on. UCO typically ships under CN 3823 80 99 or 1518 00 99 depending on the processed state. Sellers who arrive with all three in the file clear at residue-grade value; sellers who arrive with only a price ask clear at a discount.

Answered on this page

• What price does Indian UCO fetch in Europe?
• Can a small Indian collector export directly?
• Is FSSAI registration enough for European buyers?
• Do you buy the cargo yourselves?

The European side of an Asian UCO export is identical for every origin -- ISCC EU chain from the collecting point, a consistent analysis, CN 3823 80 99 or 1518 00 99, secured payment -- and what differs per country is the export side: licensing in China, the palm-mill ecosystem alongside UCO in Malaysia and Indonesia, and collection industries still scaling in Vietnam and Thailand. Asian streams carry one extra burden in Europe: they get screened harder than European material, which is exactly why sellers whose file is complete clear residue-grade value while the rest clear at a discount. For the India-specific route there is a separate page; this one covers the rest of Asia.

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• Which Asian origin do European buyers prefer?
• Do you need an export licence to sell UCO to Europe?
• Can UCO travel together with POME streams?

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.

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• Which 2027 dates matter?
• How do I track rules without a legal department?
• What rules affect documentation only?
• Can one rule change rewrite a whole market?

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.

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• What is a flash point?
• What is cold filter plugging point?
• What is iodine colour or Saybolt?
• What is unsaponifiable matter?

To buy HVO100, settle five things before you ask for a price: the volume per delivery and per month, the delivery point and Incoterm, the specification (EN 15940 class A or B and the cold-flow grade for the month of use), the sustainability evidence you need (a proof of sustainability with its greenhouse gas figure, or none), and your own status as a receiver. HVO100 is neat hydrotreated vegetable oil, a paraffinic diesel sold against EN 15940, and it is traded by the tonne while it is used by the litre: at 780 kg/m3 one tonne is about 1,282 litres. Producers answer complete enquiries first, because each of those five lines changes which supplier fits. We are brokers, not sellers: we match your enquiry to producers and traders in our network, the contract and the price are between you and them, and we are paid a brokerage commission on concluded business, agreed in advance.

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• Is HVO100 available in Southern Europe?
• Can HVO100 be stored outdoors in summer?
• What is the difference between bulk and retail HVO100 pricing?
• Do HVO100 suppliers audit customers?

To buy B100, settle the volume, the delivery point and Incoterm, the sustainability evidence and your status as a receiver, and then the one line that decides most B100 disputes: the cold-flow grade for the month the fuel will be used. B100 is 100 % fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) meeting EN 14214, the European standard for FAME as a fuel for diesel engines and heating applications. The feedstock behind the ester decides how it behaves in the cold: rapeseed methyl ester (RME) has the best cold flow of the common grades, while tallow and palm methyl esters gel first. B100 also ages, because oxidation stability falls in storage, so tell the supplier how long the fuel will sit before use. At 860 to 900 kg/m3 a tonne of B100 is about 1,111 to 1,163 litres. We are brokers, not sellers: we match your enquiry to producers and traders, and the contract is between you and them.

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• Can B100 be sourced from local producers?
• What happens if B100 arrives off-spec?
• Do B100 suppliers provide winter formulations automatically?
• Can B100 purchases be certified after delivery?

Selling glycerine in Europe starts with five numbers on the offer: glycerol content, water, ash, MONG and residual methanol -- and MONG is calculated, not measured, as 100 minus glycerol, minus water, minus ash under ISO 2464. The glycerol figure sorts the buyers: 80 % plus sells to refiners and oleochemicals, below that the conversation moves to biogas and feed. The feed route has written limits -- the EU feed material catalogue allows up to 0.5 % methanol, 7.5 % salts and 4 % MONG in crude glycerine (entry 13.8.1) and wants 99 % glycerol on dry matter for the refined entry (13.8.2). On paper, crude glycerine under CN 1520 00 00 is an Annex IX Part A advanced feedstock whose energy content counts twice toward the transport targets, while material at roughly 95 % glycerol or above crosses to the pure glycerol code 2905 45 00. In the tank, glycerine solidifies below 17.8 °C and pumps at 1.412 Pa·s at 20 °C, which is why winter cargoes ride heated or insulated ISO tanks of 20 to 26 tonnes.

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• How to sell glycerine in Europe?
• What specification do I need to sell crude glycerine?
• What is MONG and how is it calculated?
• How much methanol can crude glycerine contain?

Brazil produced 9.0 billion litres of biodiesel in 2024, roughly a fifth more than the year before, and about 73 percent of it started as soybean oil -- which makes Brazil one of the world's largest glycerine origins. The blend mandate climbed to B15 on 1 August 2025 and is set to step up again after February 2026, so the glycerine stream keeps growing with it. For every hundred kilos of biodiesel, roughly ten kilos of crude glycerine arrive: a 9-billion-litre industry produces glycerine at the scale of a mid-sized chemicals commodity. The export file is the same five numbers every buyer asks for -- glycerol, water, ash, MONG, methanol -- plus the CN classification (crude under 1520 00 00, pure glycerol at 95 percent and above under 2905 45 00), the ISCC chain where the cargo claims Annex IX Part A compliance value, and heated logistics: glycerine solidifies below 17.8 °C, and the Europe lane from Santos and Paranaguá crosses the equator twice.

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• How is crude glycerine analysed?
• Does Brazil produce a lot of glycerine?
• What is Brazilian crude glycerine made from?
• Can Brazilian glycerine claim Annex IX value in Europe?

Southeast Asia runs the largest crude glycerine stream in the world, because it runs the largest palm biodiesel industry: Indonesia alone allocated 15.6 million kilolitres of biodiesel for 2025, up from around 13 million the year before, under a mandate that reached B40 at the start of 2025. Palm-based crude typically carries 80 % glycerol and above, with potassium or sodium catalyst salts setting the ash figure, and the region also hosts the world's densest refining base -- Wilmar, Musim Mas, KLK OLEO, IOI Oleochemical and Ecogreen all refine glycerine there -- plus a distinct waste-based stream from China's export biodiesel plants. The export file is the same worldwide: the five numbers (glycerol, water, ash, MONG, methanol), the CN classification (crude under 1520 00 00, pure glycerol at 95 % plus under 2905 45 00), the ISCC chain where Annex IX Part A compliance value is claimed, and heated logistics against a 17.8 °C solidification point.

Answered on this page

• How much glycerine does Indonesia make?
• What is palm glycerine?
• Can Asian crude glycerine go into European animal feed?
• Does palm glycerine fall under the deforestation rules?

Glycerine trades in a ladder of grades, and the rung decides the market: crude from biodiesel at 80 % plus, technical at 98 to 99 %, refined pharmacopoeia material at 99.5 % and above -- Ph.Eur. monograph 0496 for anhydrous glycerol, 0497 for the 85 % solution, USP not less than 99.0 %. Below the crude rung sit the dilute streams: sweet water from fat splitting and spent soap lyes from saponification, both named in the EU feed material catalogue, plus refining residues. And the ladder runs backwards as well: glycerolysis uses glycerine itself to pretreat high-FFA feedstocks, with published work running it on crude glycerine straight from the biodiesel plant. The molecule that leaves the plant can be the reagent that cleans its next feedstock.

Answered on this page

• What are the grades of glycerine?
• What is crude glycerine?
• What is technical grade glycerine?
• What is USP glycerine?