new to baled cardboard/paper broker business

Hello All,

My name is Michael, and I'm a NEW business owner/broker. Basically the business is to purchase the baled cardboard/papers in the US and export them to China. I'm currently living in Seattle WA area. The biggest problem that I have right now is: i don't know where to purchase the baled cardboard/papers from. I called/emailed at least 30 places and no one seems care what I want. I dont want to buy them directly from the retail store because I dont have the trucks/equioments setup for that yet, I would like to purchase baled cardboard/paper from recycling yard, but no luck so far.

So my question to you is that:
1) where can I purchase baled cardboard/paper from? hopefully in Washington State to lower the transportation cost
2) why a lot of recycling yard wont talk to me?
3) whats ongong price per tons of cardboard in your area?

At beginning, I would like to purchase 1000 tons per month, as business grown, I would like to purchase at least 20k tons per month. I have a strong sales team in China.

Thank you for your input!

Michael

Most recycling yards cannot make enough profit on paper/carboard to buy it (or even take it). Recycling yards get hundreds of calls a day and cardboard is probably last on their list of anything they want to talk about.

Get your trucks and crew in order, go to retail locations and go above and beyond the service they have for carboard now. It's going to be a tough road but be professional, work LONG hours, have the right equipment, and slowly you can develop a business.

I beg to differ, APA. Cardboard and Mixed News are riding high, this year. The prices from Q1 were some of the highest seen nationally since the 1990's. It's cooled quite a bit but the numbers are still very good. In the Northeast, we were enjoying cardboard for nearly $190 per ton and most paper in the mid-hundreds. I believe both are closer, now, to $150 and $100, respectively.

One reason the OP may not be getting callbacks is because most large accounts will already have dedicated brokers and contracts. These arrangements probably include non-competes and other legal obligation. Admin may be on high alert for people fishing these accounts and the procedure is to ignore when possible. I think the West Coast is WM territory.

If I were in your position, I would be hitting up smaller municipal accounts and mid-scale scrap fiber producers, like grocery stores and newspaper presses (if those even exist anymore). These tend to be in a position to talk shop, since they produce enough to have tonnage and/or bales but not enough to be able to command their own market destinies. You might also talk to recyclers of other products, like plastics and electronics, as they tend to generate fiber stock as a by-product of their collection mechanisms and they already have the baling equipment. The West Coast has some very serious players in recycling and environmental stewardship but their proximity to Asia means that the "easy tons" are already spoken for and sold.

Have you considered loaning equipment to accounts with product but no machinery?

So don't just throw a match to it and watch all it burn. where's the fun in that?

Before we all get ahead of ourselves and start throwing our retirements at paper futures, I wanted to bring this up:http://www.recyclingtoday.com/articl...at_pco=cfd-1.0

I had heard that this was coming down the pipe, following the hubbub surrounding National Sword. Yikes.

It seems like in the near term, this could spook the market into offloading as much material into the Far East as is possible, before the big window closes. But I don't know if that will be good or bad for prices.