When we granulate a tote at end-of-life, the HDPE regrind has to go somewhere. In 2024 that somewhere is different from what it was in 2018, when China's National Sword policy reshaped the export market for mixed plastics. Now the domestic buyers have grown, the export window has narrowed, and pricing has stabilized within a workable band that varies with color and contamination.
Who we sold regrind to in 2024
In the ten months ending October 2024, our regrind went to eight distinct buyers. Roughly:
- Four regional injection molders in PA and OH — irrigation fittings, construction bracketry, pallet blocks. These buyers want dark-color regrind and don't care about color consistency.
- Two re-bottle pellet houses — they compound our regrind with virgin resin to make non-food HDPE bottles and containers. These buyers want natural or white regrind and will pay a premium.
- One pipe extruder in Virginia — black corrugated drain pipe, a huge market, not picky about contamination.
- One export broker — shipped to Vietnam and Malaysia, prices 20% below domestic.
What color and contamination do to the price
Color is the single biggest pricing variable. Natural (clear to milky-white) HDPE regrind from food-grade totes commands a meaningful premium. Dark-color or mixed regrind from industrial totes sits at the lower end of the band. The delta comes from what the buyer can do with it — natural regrind can be dyed to any color, which makes it a substitute for virgin in more applications.
A clean natural-color regrind sale is worth about 40% more than a dark mixed regrind. That math is why we sort our granulator intake rather than running everything together.
Domestic vs. export
We ship about 85% of our regrind domestically. The export market pays less but takes volume without caring about consistency, which is useful for clearing a backlog after a big intake month. Freight to the Port of Philadelphia is a small per-pound add at current market rates, so export only pencils out when domestic buyers are full.
Outlook
Virgin HDPE spot prices through mid-2024 have held in a band that keeps regrind attractive. If virgin were to drop to the lows we last saw in 2016, regrind pricing pressure would squeeze hard. For now, the buyer pool is healthier than it's been since before National Sword. That's good news for anyone in the position of having to dispose of a broken tote.