Waste plastics brokerage

Own pyrolysis captures more of the value chain when feedstock volume and quality justify the investment, and the machine market's Chinese entry prices make the arithmetic reachable for smaller players. Our plant and machine guide sets out costs, sorting and the offtake question honestly.

Containerised bales and bags arrive daily into European capacity from near and far, the export paperwork shaping flows more than freight does. The box is the unit of this trade's patience.

Disposal's negative pricing against recycling's positive one, the same tonne crossing from cost to revenue at the purity line, sorting being the bridge. The line between waste and product is worth money.

Different contamination profiles and different buyers, agri-film's soil and sand against household's mixed residues, separation preserving both streams' value. The farm and the kitchen are different markets.

Diversion targets feeding recycling demand, regulation building the buyer list year by year, policy being this market's weather system. The law is a customer here.

Collection seasons, harvests and consumption cycles move volumes, winter slowing some flows and accelerating others, the calendar reading differently per polymer. Plastics follow the human calendar.

Under cover, off the ground, per polymer family, because wet bales sell at wet weight and mixed yards sell at confusion prices. A tidy yard is an interest-free price premium.

Polymer share, moisture, contamination, PVC level and bale weight consistency, the five answers that turn a photograph into an offer. Bales are bought by numbers, not pictures.

Yes, big bags and containers are regrind's natural habitat, with ventilation and static care in the packing. The form travels as comfortably as it sells.

Separate the polymers at source, keep them dry and clean, accumulate to truckload, and offer with a description a buyer can price. Production scrap is the easiest first sale in this entire site.

Density and buyers: film bales and agglomerate serve one set of intakes, rigid regrind another, with overlapping markets only when purity is high. The form follows your packaging line, the sale follows the form.

We place them. Lumps and machine purgings are usually single-polymer production arisings, which makes them some of the cleanest material in the trade, and they suit both mechanical recyclers and pyrolysis intake once size reduced. Our how to sell page covers the forms in detail.

Bales trade per tonne, not per bale, and the tonne price runs from real money for sorted single-polymer material to close to zero for wet mixed loads. The sort, the moisture and the polymer mix decide where in that range a bale lands.

Post-industrial is factory scrap: clean, known polymer, known history, and priced accordingly. Post-consumer is what collection systems recover, with labels, food residue and mixed polymers in the mix, and it earns its value through sorting. Buyers ask which of the two you hold before anything else.

Material recovery facility output: the sorted bales a sorting plant produces from collected waste, typically per polymer family with a stated purity. Most traded post-consumer material is MRF output, and the purity figure on the bale is what buyers quote against.

None are unsellable as such, but some stop being worth their logistics: heavily contaminated mixed loads, unknown polymer mixtures and PVC-heavy streams price at or below handling cost. The honest read on a difficult stream costs you nothing to ask for.

Yes, sorted film is a core stream, and the classic 98 over 2 grades are the reference material buyers know by heart. Moisture and the carry-over of rigids and paper decide which door your bales fit through.

The specification table under What a buyer needs before quoting puts loading point incoterms at exw, fca, dap; whether the site can load a 40 ft hc..

Under Regulation (EU) 2024/1157, exports of non-hazardous plastic waste to non-OECD countries are banned from 21 November 2026. From 21 May 2026 exports to OECD countries move to the notification procedure, meaning prior written consent rather than green-list simplicity. Non-OECD countries may request a derogation from 21 May 2029 by demonstrating environmentally sound management.

It widens the gap between good and poor material, on a known date. Volume that used to clear to non-OECD destinations has to find a European or OECD home, which presses hardest on mixed rigids, heavily printed film and anything expensive to sort. At the same time PPWR raises demand for clean recyclate. Supply and demand are being legislated in opposite directions for different grades.

Partly, and that is exactly why it matters after 2026. Pyrolysis tolerates contamination that mechanical recycling cannot, so material with nowhere else to go acquires a route. What pyrolysis does not tolerate is chlorine and silicon, so PVC content and certain additives still decide whether a bale is usable. See plastic pyrolysis oil.

Polymer and grade, origin (post-industrial or post-consumer, single source or collected), form (baled, loose, regrind, washed flake), tonnage per month, and a photograph. For anything heading to chemical recycling, add chlorine and silicon. Plastic waste trades badly on description alone, and having this ready turns a three-week negotiation into a three-day one.

Exports of non-hazardous plastic waste from the EU to non-OECD countries are prohibited from 21 November 2026 under Regulation (EU) 2024/1157. Since 21 May 2026, exports to OECD countries have required the full prior written notification and consent procedure rather than the green-list route. Non-OECD countries may apply for re-listing from 21 May 2029.

Turkey is an OECD member, so it is not caught by the non-OECD prohibition. However, since 21 May 2026 such shipments fall under the prior written notification and consent procedure, which means competent-authority consent at both ends, a financial guarantee and a materially longer lead time than an Annex VII movement. Turkey also applies its own national import restrictions on plastic waste, so confirm the current position at the receiving end before committing.

It is the cleanliness ratio: 98/2 means around 98 % target polymer to 2 % contamination, 95/5 around 95 % to 5 %. The gap sounds small and is not, 98/2 clears readily to mechanical recyclers, while 95/5 and below competes for a narrower set of buyers and, since the 2026 export changes, a much narrower set of destinations. Moisture is assessed separately and can matter as much as the contamination figure.

Yes, but honestly. Mixed rigids and heavily contaminated fractions generally route to pyrolysis feed or energy recovery rather than mechanical recycling, and price accordingly. What we will not do is take an unsorted load to market as something it is not, that wastes the seller's time and costs us the buyer.

B3011 covers the plastic waste entries on the Basel Convention green list, introduced by the 2019 plastic waste amendments that replaced the former single B3010 entry. It is used for sorted, single-polymer and readily recyclable plastic waste meeting the entry conditions. The code determines which shipment procedure applies, so getting it right on the paperwork is not cosmetic.

No. We are a broker: we introduce the seller to the buyer, agree the terms between them and take a commission on concluded business. We never take title to the cargo, so we have no position to protect and no reason to press a load onto a buyer who cannot run it.

From a single 40 ft container of a clean, well-described grade up to ongoing programmes of several hundred tonnes a month. Recurring arisings are where a broker earns their keep, because the value is in a stable home rather than a one-off clearance.