My material waste suppliers or should I say rather one of them contacted me today to make sure I still want the next consignment. They opened back up this week and were letting me know where they were with their numbers. Just over 3 tons is not great as there are another 7 tons to still go which could be a mid March delivery.
I think what astounds me the most about this is that people are prepared to import this waste material and still find it profitable to use in their products whatever they are making. If you consider they will be taking roughly 30 tons at a time as that is how many compacted bales will fit into a 40ft container which these days costs northwards of $6K each as container shipping has doubled in price over the last 2 years.
I am currently paying $0.125c per Kg which includes delivery then those importing this are paying a serious premium. I would estimate that the people importing this waste material are paying roughly 4 x the price I am paying. Once you start realizing others are prepared to pay that sort of price then the deal I am getting is really very good.
I suppose I would call it high end stuffing as it is basically millions of shredded fibers that have been processed having been through an industrial shredder and washing machine plus dryer. I have been looking for close to 12 months now and this is the only company locally that produces this type of material waste. I wish they would generate more as I would still buy it all and what I did not require I would sell.
They always say there is a buyer for everything and if you were not part of this industry you would have no idea. This company calls it pit waste as that is exactly what this is and they generate more than 30 tons of this annually. Not huge money, but then again everything they process does generate money and there is nothing thrown away so that is a sign of a great business model.
Dumping waste at a landfill is not cheap so by selling this they are actually saving a fortune even if it just covers one of their bills per year. They say 3% lost in business hidden costs like mistakes, returns etc works out to a real cost of 40% in lost revenue and this shows why reducing any type of cost is paramount to the overall success of that business. You have to look after every dollar otherwise you are throwing more money away than you can imagine.
One of our other material waste suppliers saves on sending this waste to a land fill which involves renting skips weekly and paying a fee per kilogram. This is actually quite expensive and why finding an alternative way to off load the waste is important and is actually quite difficult. This is a specialised field and there are not many doing this and why when you find these companies you hold onto them.