Prices: how they are quoted and how to read them

• Mandates and their national implementation. Demand for waste-based feedstock is created by law, not by preference. When a member state changes its multiplier or its cap, the feedstock price moves before anything physical does.
• The Annex IX Part B cap. Capped at 1.7 % of transport energy per member state. As a market approaches its cap, the marginal tonne is worth less. See Annex IX.
• Trade measures. EU anti-dumping duties on Chinese biodiesel of roughly 10 % to 35.6 % under Regulation (EU) 2025/261 reshaped the import picture.
• Collection economics. Waste feedstock supply is not price elastic in the short run. Restaurants do not fry more because UCO went up.
• Freight and the arbitrage window. Half of what looks like a price move between regions is a freight move.
• Certification availability, which behaves like a separate market on top of the physical one.

People ask what UCO costs per tonne, or what animal fat is worth, and the honest answer starts with the fact that a cargo of Annex IX material has two values, not one. There is the physical product, and there is the unit a fuel supplier can count against their national obligation once the material has been turned into fuel and delivered. In most European markets the second one moves more than the first.

That second value is national. It is created by a member state's transport obligation, it is traded in that member state's own unit, and it does not travel across borders. This is the single biggest reason two people can quote the same specification and be a long way apart: they are pricing into different destinations.

The Dutch system changed underneath the market this year, and it is worth knowing if you are selling into the Netherlands. The Nederlandse Emissieautoriteit lists the changes itself: HBEs became EREs, the obligation now reaches across several transport sectors rather than one, each sector has to decarbonise in its own right, there are limits and sub-targets per sector including a new RFNBO sub-target, the opt in is gone, the multipliers changed, and registration and verification of fuel deliveries became mandatory in a new register. If you last priced a Dutch cargo against the old system, the arithmetic behind it has moved.

So what does that mean when you ask us for a level. It means the first questions back are the specification, the origin, the volume, the destination and the delivery basis, and none of those is us being difficult. Change the destination and you change which obligation the material is being priced into, which changes the answer. Give us those five and you get a read on where the parcel is likely to clear. Ask for a number without them and anything we said would be noise.

The same applies to what certification costs. There is no single figure: the ISCC turnover fee is based on the general turnover of the company rather than on the certified volume, and the audit cost depends on your certification body, your scope and how many points of origin fall into the sample. Our ISCC certification page sets out the drivers, including the sample formula and the surveillance intervals.

Price reporting agencies invest heavily in assessing these markets and license the result. Republishing their numbers on a public website is not something we will do, and any broker who does it is telling you something about how they treat other people's confidential information too.

A published number is also stale the moment it is written, and stale prices start more arguments than they settle.

What we give instead is a live read: where we see business actually clearing for your specification, on your basis, into your destination, today. That costs you nothing and no obligation. If you need a formally assessed published price for a contract clause, you need a price reporting agency subscription, and we will tell you that rather than pretend otherwise.